I thoroughly enjoyed Steve Levy’s ITLA web seminar this Monday on Legal Project Management. Of course the subject of Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs) came up and the inter-connection between them and legal project management was discussed.
A noteworthy point from Steve was the need to focus on outcomes. He highly recommends that any legal
We at 3 Geeks will be watching with great anticipation and interest in how the 2010 Rate Increase Season unfolds. Firms and lawyers are facing a significant challenge this year. On one hand we have a zero inflation year (based on your source). And clients are still in cost-cutting mode – not very excited
Previously on 3 Geeks we discussed how Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs) might evolve on the law firm side of things. This post explores a possible evolution for how AFAs might evolve on the client side. Whereas law firms will need to insure profitability as they embrace AFAs, clients will need to solve the value-to-price equation
Having spent considerable time working with Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs), I am starting to see a more defined path for how AFAs might evolve within law firms. So based on my experience and all I have read about AFAs, I predict the following evolution for law firms:
1) Setting Price. Lawyers and firms are
Most of the alternative fees posts on 3 Geeks are penned by Toby. However, after reading the articles on Seyfarth Shaw implementing a Six Sigma method; O’Melveny Myers’ leaked alternative fees memo; and Mayer Brown and Reed Smith’s discussion of alternative fee agreements, I wanted to jump in on how these changes in how the
“Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use.” Wendell Johnson A recent ‘debate‘ on Ron Baker’s Verasage site got me thinking about hourly versus value or fixed fee pricing. The substance of the debate between Ron and Colin Jasper focuses on whether hourly billing is ever justifiable. As
Some recent comments disparaging leverage inspired me to pick up the gauntlet. Much like Dennis and Tom’s recent podcast on “What Technology is Dead Today” I expect the title and discussion promoting leverage may bring some attention.
In Patrick Lamb’s post on the subject he chastises Lexis for promoting good leverage in an
But what are we really talking about when we talk about leverage? I suggest we are actually talking about profit. But just
All this talk about alternative billing and alternative fee arrangements (AFAs) might lead one to believe there are numerous tools on the market for managing these.
I’ve previously posted on 3 Geeks about how budgets sit at the core of AFAs and on methods for building reasonable budgets. With that concept in mind,
Jay Shepherd’s post on ‘associates as overhead’ got me thinking about associates and value. Jay closes his post with the comment, “They (clients) want to pay for value.” His main point is that law firms should bill by value and not by time keeper. This idea has merit, but as I have