Are lawyers really beginning to explore alternative billing in earnest?

This week seems to have been the week for questions relating to alternative and value billing – what are they, how can they be used, how do clients react to them, how do they work with the ethical rules, etc. Questions about alternative and value billing seemed to be coming out of the woodwork on list serves, in private emails, in discussions at bar association and networking events and elsewhere this week.

Whole books can (and have) been written about value based billing and alternative billing for lawyers and other professionals. It’s impossible to cover everything in a blog post (or even several blog posts), but since this seems to have been a ‘hot’ topic for discussion over the past week, here are a few of my previous posts about the issue:

• How can I set ‘flat’ or ‘value based’ fees for my litigation practice?
• Should I discount my fees?
• How do you use flat fees?
• How to get clients beyond ‘sticker shock’
• How do you determine whether a fee is ‘reasonable’? 

I am glad that the legal community is beginning to discuss these issues in earnest and to seek out some real information about alternative billing, rather than continuing to rely exclusively on hourly billing methods. I’m excited about the possibility of changing the hourly system on a large scale in the legal community.

I will cull through this week’s discussion for additional suggestions and explanations if the above posts don’t satisfy your curiosity. Please send me your questions or comments about alternative and value billing so we can keep the discussion going!