November 27, 2006
What Corporate Clients Read Into Law Firm Bills
Rees Morrison wrote a must-read article for the Legal Times that is also available on Law.com. When it comes to practices within your law firm, Rees believes your bills read like an open book. Bills tell clients the whole story—the good, the bad, and the ugly. In his article Do the Math on Outside Law Firms, he points out that he is writing about more than “the kinds of billing abuses that third-party bill auditors should ferret out — block billing, differences in amounts billed for the same event, days of more than 10 hours billed, and long, suspicious patterns of hours.” He notes that, “Bill review should not be just a drudgery to be gotten through. In fact, bills can tell you much more about the performance of your law firms and your own staff than most law departments realize. “
While law firms look at their bills as just a record of the billable work and pass through expenses for the period covered, savvy corporate clients are reading between the lines. Here is an executive overview of some of the things a savvy corporate client is likely to read into your bills:
Those 0.2 billable hours added each month read “Partner Sprinkling” and don’t expect me to pay for drive-by billers.
An associate with more than 1000 to 1500 hours on my matter, all in one year, doesn’t have enough to do and is padding their billable time at my expense.
More than 30 percent partner time means I’m paying partner rates for associate and paralegal level work.
If expenses are more than 10 percent of the bill, my guess is that no one in the law firm is looking out for me. They aren’t getting the best price for expenses passed through to clients.
I can tell it’s not a well-run (managed) law firm because their bills included work and expenses more than 30 days old. Sloppy is as sloppy does!
While there can be a good and legitimate reason for all of the red flags listed above, the client-centered law firm will review its bills from the client’s point-of-view to manage the client’s business efficiently and to proactively communicate with the client when billed items, left unexplained, might indicate otherwise.
Rees W. Morrison, co-head of law-department management consulting for Hildebrandt International, hosts the blog Law Department Management.
Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc. For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income, go to www.Juris.com.
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Filed under Blog by Tom Collins