One blawg's primer on "alternative billing"

Jim Hassett writes a terrific blawg with an undeservedly generic name, "Legal Business Development." If you're a lawyer, you should be reading it religiously.

[Sidebar on the term blawg: I don't care for it. Why? Because English is primarily a spoken language, not a written language. When you say the word blawg, no one can tell that you mean law blog instead of plain-old-regular-person blog. But I'm just saying. End of sidebar.]

Jim's currently running a five-part series called "The LegalBizDev Guide to Alternative Fees." The first episode came out today: "Alternative fees (Part 1 of 5): What’s wrong with billing by the hour?" Jim's put an awful lot of work into this project, and it shows. If you poke around his website, you can actually read the whole series at once. But that's kind of like watching "24" on DVD — you don't get the anticipation that builds as the week goes on.

I've said it before: I hate the term "alternative billing." (Even more than blawg.) It has a seamy connotation, like "alternative lifestyle." My favorite dictionary, The New Oxford American Dictionary (now available as an iPhone app), includes this definition of alternative:

of or relating to behavior that is considered unconventional and is often seen as a challenge to traditional norms

I guess that's not so bad. Anyway, enjoy Jim's first episode here. Keep up the good work, Jim.