Comments on: Innovation in billing: the lawyers are eating our lunch

By: 10 dis-commandments for making money « RetailSmart

10 dis-commandments for making money « RetailSmart — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 12:18:11 +0000

[...] Innovation in billing: the lawyers are eating our lunch (accmanpro.com) [...]

By: Doug Cornelius

Doug Cornelius — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:00:03 +0000

Dennis -

Don’t get fooled into thinking lawyers are leading the way. It’s a lot of puffery. Morgan Lewis is trying to alleviate associate concerns and help with recruiting. (I would guess that many associates failed to hit the 2000 hr mark and probably will also next year.)

Clients and lawyers have been complaining about the billable for decades. They have also been predicting its demise for decades. As mark Twain said: “the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

By: Ed Kless

Ed Kless — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:02:57 +0000

Dennis, don’t you worry, there are still dinosaurs our there. Witness this exchange with David Giacalone –> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ethicalesq/2008/11/25/smart-clients-care-about-bonuses-and-marketplace-value/

Die Billable Hour DIE!!!

By: Dennis Howlett

Dennis Howlett — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 04:29:41 +0000

That’s really encouraging Michael. I’ll post this on ICAEW site as well – hopefully tomorrow.

By: Michael Kridel

Michael Kridel — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 04:22:44 +0000

We’re a 100+ person, three office local CPA firm in South Florida. We have been moving into, and now primarily using, fixed fee engagement letters with fluid change orders for most, if not all, in our Tax/Wealth and Small Business Services groups. Audit typically has a fixed fee engagement, as does Business Valuation. My group, Litigation, never has fixed fees. It is too hard to guess in this type of work.

We have found increasing acceptance of these new engagement terms, particularly in this economy. We’ve also found that it is much easier to get a client to pay for an agreed upon change order than bill them higher amounts later, especially as we are moving more and more into COD deliverables.

My partners are very happy with the results, though as a traditional practitioner for 35 years, I still have a hard time getting the term “change order” out of my mouth without thinking about the last house I purchased.