Lawyers Leaving Hours Behind

I'm pleased Robert Ambrogi and Patrick Lamb posted about Exemplar Law Partners -- a new firm not charging by the hour.

Awesome! This is a better way of doing business that is gaining momentum across multiple professions including law, accounting, advertising, IT and consulting. Even I've been working (for years) toward being 100% fixed price and am in the process of transitioning the last of my hourly buyers to fixed pricing.

But let's talk more about law. Here are 3 more examples:

I had the pleasure of meeting some St. Louis attorneys last week, Simon Passanante, a more than 30-person firm, who are litigating IP matters on a contingency model just as they do product liability cases. Truly not expecting an affirmative answer, I prompted: "Tell me you don't keep time sheets...?" to which John Simon, Tony Simon and Erich Vietch answered, "No, only when we absolutely have to on a class action." I confess, the employees that I saw all looked, um, happy...

David Ambrose runs a small real estate finance firm in Portland, OR, that is moving to a fixed price/no timesheet model. They were featured in CNN Money/Fortune Small Business a couple months ago, here. This is a good story covering his many considerations in the shift.

And then there is Sherman & Jeffries, a family law firm in AL. They have a blog that is really good, here it is. Michael Sherman says their firm works entirely on a fixed price basis and would never go back to hourly billing. (Sherman was at the original LexThink in 2004.)

There are certainly many more who deserve kudos and are worthy of study as they are absolute trailblazers adopting these business practices despite great skepticism from their peers.

CPA Tim McKey (who runs a practice in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with no timesheets and 100% value pricing) is the newest fellow of VeraSage. He said it best when he told Ron Baker: "I'd sleep under a bridge before I'd go back to running my firm under the old method."