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When lawyers talk about Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs) they usually want to know: 1) Which one works?, and 2) What is the number? When I get this “silver bullet” question, I always reply with the same answer. There is no silver bullet AFA – the real secret of AFAs is talking to the client. This

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Between last Thursday’s Elephant Post and today, the BigLaw firm of Howrey ceased to exist. In talking with some of the people at the local Houston Association of Litigation Support Managers (HALSM) yesterday, I heard the local office of Howrey changed all of the computers, telephones, login, and email accounts overnight to Winston and Strawn.…

An unspoken, unasked question of the Howrey dissolution is: Who will be left holding the bag? It’s the old “last one out, turn off the lights” situation. Only in this scenario, the last ones out also get stuck with a very expensive light bill.
There has been of a feeding frenzy by other law firms

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The Law Society Gazette reports that 30% of UK solicitor firms have already talked to potential investors about investing in their firms come October. Some additional stats from the article:
“65% said they were ‘comfortable securing external investment from a non-legal investor”
“Some 65% of solicitors said they would consider doing work with a non-legal

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Yesterday I heard a presentation from a well-known legal consulting group about the state of the legal market for 2011. This is part of an annual road-show they take to different cities to talk about the legal market in general and any distinctions in the local market. Although there were no big surprises in the

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As the market moves away from hourly rates to fee-based billing, law firms are facing a significant market challenge. One of the foundations of a functioning market is “free information.” Economists mean “free” in the sense that information about pricing is freely available to everyone in a market. That way the market can continually set

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Since Ayelette called me out on delivering depressing news earlier in the week, I thought I would end the week on a consistent, low-note by highlighting a emerging trend in downward pressure on legal fees.
The existence of fee/pricing pressure in the legal market is common knowledge. However, based on my experience I see some

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In one of those about-to-fall-asleep, mind-is-wandering moments, it occurred to me that law firms are financially structured a lot like the US Social Security system. I wish I could give the genesis for this thought, but I was lucky to retain the overall analogy. However, it may have come from Ayelette’s post about my recent

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I’m going to play “Devil’s Advocate” for a few minutes, so bear with me. I hear a lot of talk about how law firm administration has to:

  • “do more with less” 
  • “everyone has to wear multiple hats” 
  • “times are tough” 
  • “budgets have to be cut in hard times” 
  • “clients just aren’t paying for that any

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