Consumer Law

Billing By The Hour - A Dying Concept?

By M. Stan Herring

Recently a well known lawyer (Evan R. Chesler) wrote a piece in Forbes about why the billable hour method of billing clients should be killed. We agree.

Here is an excerpt from this interesting article:

The billable hour makes no sense, not even for lawyers. If you are successful and win a case early on, you put yourself out of work. If you get bogged down in a land war in Asia, you make more money. That is frankly nuts.

Our primary practice is representing consumers in consumer litigation and injured victims in personal injury cases. We do not bill by the hour. We use either a straight contingency or a combination of flat fee and contingency rate. We also defend consumers who are being sued by debt buyers. Generally we offer our clients an hourly rate approach but we prefer (and almost all clients prefer) a flat fee rate for either the entire litigation or for certain phases of the litigation.

Billing by the hour is ingrained in my lawyers' minds and in the eyes of clients but it seems this is shifting to other alternatives. If you are hiring a lawyer, consider options in addition to the billable hour rate.

Full post as published by Alabama Consumer Blog on March 11, 2009 (boomark / email).