
It’s coming up to six years now since The Times published our article “Time’s Up for Recording Hours” and guess what – we’re still here.
For those of you wondering whether (and hoping that) our model was a gimmick and not sustainable we have some bad news … it is working better than we ever hoped and our clients love it.
The certainty that clients (and us) have from not having to worry about open ended hourly rates and the awkward often inevitable renegotiation of fees has gone down a storm, not to mention the freedom it gives us to organise and deliver the advice in the most appropriate way possible with no internal wrangling. We get the best (and not the most junior) lawyer to deliver the advice.
We are often asked (mostly by other lawyers) “What happens if a piece of work takes longer than you anticipated?”. And guess what? When you don’t record your time (or base fees on time) nothing can take longer than you thought. You deliver the work and receive the agreed fee – end of. No trying to justify to a client what you did or why you did it or that things weren’t as you originally thought and no explaining to your firm why time has to be written off or not recorded in the first place.
It is not about time, it is about delivering the best advice we can and building collaborative long term relationships based on mutual trust and respect.