Timelessly - Building Professional Firms Without Timesheets

The Revolution spreads to Solo Practice University

One of my big goals for 2010 was to adjust my role as a commentator on the state of the practice of law and become more of a change agent dedicated to helping fix it. Today I'm taking a first step in that direction by joining the faculty of the pioneering Solo Practice University. If you're not familiar with SPU you should head on over and check it out. Under the leadership of legal-education trailblazer Susan Cartier Liebel (who also blogs at the ABA Blawg 100 site Build A Solo Practice @ SPU), Solo Practice University picks up where law school left off. One of the most common complaints about legal education is its weakness in providing practical education about how to actually be a lawyer. SPU's got it covered.

What really convinced me to join the faculty was ... well ... the faculty itself. Check them out here. This is a phenomenal collection of big thinkers in the world of legal practice. Students (both active practitioners and current law-school students) have access to these big minds and can start learning how to improve their own practices right away.

I'm teaching a course called "Fixing Your Fees, Fixing Your Practice." In it, I'll be doling out practical advice on how to abandon the billable hour and replace it with open prices. If this change is going to happen, it's going to happen first with the solo and small-firm lawyers. And in my new role as an SPU faculty member, I'm going to help make that happen. So check out all the things you can be learning. Then enroll and start getting the real-world secrets about running your practice that you never got in law school.

Here's a short video (2:38) on the real reasons I've joined this great faculty:

"He shall from time to time ...." Or not.

You'll have to forgive this post. It's not really about lawyers, although it does cite the Constitution. You see, I've been distracted lately: the final season of "Lost" is just a few weeks away, and there's a lot to be stressed about. (Publicity photo above. Click to biggify.) Will they be able to wrap it up in one short season? Will the finale justly reward viewers' five-year commitment to the series? And most importantly, will President Obama's State of the Union bump the February 2 premiere?

Finally, this weekend, my fears were allayed. Turns out, the President won't bump the premiere. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs announced that the State of the Union would be rescheduled to accommodate the Season 6 opener of the ABC series. No, really. He actually said:

I don't foresee a scenario in which millions of people that hope to finally get some conclusion in Lost are preempted by the president. I assume it's a big deal at ABC.

Well, that makes me feel much better. The nation is at war twice over, the terrorists are targeting our planes, the economy continues to bleed jobs, the financial institutions are relying on tax money to pay their ginormous bonuseses, the Patriots were spanked out of the playoffs — in other words, the country's in rough shape — but the President felt it necessary to postpone his Article II, Section 3 duties so as to avoid messing up primetime. (Dude, the Constitution does not say, "He shall from time time check with TV Guide before addressing Congress ....")

Don't get me wrong: I'm delighted about the schedule change. I'm just also a little concerned about the government's ability to maintain the respect of its citizens. Can you imagine the outcry if the last guy had done this?

Maybe the thing to do would have been to reschedule to avoid "Lost," but not publicly admit that that is what they're doing. Otherwise, they end up looking kind of ... lost.

Just sayin'.

More details from E! Online here, and the New York Times' "Arts Beat" blog here.

• • •

For more TV-related goodness, check out how Conan O'Brien won the first round against NBC in the late-night wars, at our sister blog, Gruntled Employees.

Blawg Review #246

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

— Alan Kay, computer scientist, 1971

The future is already here — it's just not evenly distributed.

— William Gibson, author, 2003

In gathering the best and the brightest from the blawgosphere for this first full week of the 2010s, I thought I'd look at them through the lens of a crystal ball. Many of us are wondering what this new decade will be like, especially in the world of the law. First, though, let's talk about what this decade will be called.

A decade with no name

Look, we just went through a decade that had no name, let alone a cool one. No Roaring Twenties, no Gay Nineties (the 1890s). Even the decades that lacked ready-made adjectives could easily summon up images and memories: the eighties (bad hair), the sixties (bad hair, but in a different way), the seventies (bad lapels), or the nineties (the 1990s; nothing but irony). And don't talk to me about calling it the "Aughts" — what are we, soccer fans now? No, we're stuck with calling them "the two thousands," which stinks because you can't tell if you're referring to the decade or the century. (Kind of like my problem with calling law blogs blawgs, because you can't tell the difference when you're saying blog or blawg aloud. But for today, "Blawg Review" it is.)

First prediction: this decade will be called the "twenty tens" (or the "tens," for short).

Not "teens," not "tweens," not "tennies," or anything silly like that. And for Pete's sake, quit with the "two thousand and ..." business. People, especially lawyers (who generally are people, though some would argue), tend to clutter their speech with extra words. Don't. This year is "twenty ten," not "two thousand and ten." Check out this website devoted to this cause: twentynot2000.com. Also see this discussion at Wikipedia, and this article at TechCrunch.

OK. Now that we've got that settled, what's the law going to look like in the tens?

Killable hours

Second prediction, and this one's a bit of a layup for me, and will come as a surprise to no one, given the source: The billable hour will die die die. If it survives in any form at all by the end of the tens, it will be at the kind of fringe firms that will cause you to sadly shake your head and maybe cross to the other side of the street.

But don't just take my word on it. Over the past year, the blawgosphere and oldstyle-media traffic on the topic has taken on the shape of a hockey-stick graph, without all those embarrassing Climategate emails and tree-ring proxies. For example, legal-marketing guru Larry Bodine's Law Marketing Blog covers Comcast's recent insistence that its lawyers stop billing them hourly; Ashby Jones at The Wall Street Journal Law Blog also has the story.

Even more novel, Matt Homann recommends that we let our clients set their own price. Matt, whose name is synonymous with innovation, writes at the [non]billable hour that if lawyers focus on value to their clients, rather than their costs (their time), their clients will reward them. Across the pond, Michael Scutt at Jobsworth asks "Is it all about price?" He answers his own question, writing that lawyers need to be salespeople and recognize and apply his "single sales principle": your client's compelling need plus your credible solution plus your perceived value equals a sale.

Speaking of value, Ed Kless of the visionary Verasage Institute deftly shows how price has nothing to do with cost. His post has a graph showing that HP black ink is far more expensive than bottled water, which is in turn far more expensive than crude oil.

Jason Mendelson's Musings discusses what the failed hourly billing system has wrought — namely, clients who demand ever-increasing discounts and clients who don't pay. These are just symptoms of the problem, of course. Another symptom is that the billable-hour system pays lawyers more if they do more work, rather than enough work. Ron Friedmann discusses "good enough" at Strategic Legal Technology. But let's not get too focused on counting and measuring and reporting hours and documents and other output. The Wall Street Journal this week wrote approvingly about firms' having electronic dashboards to monitor their hours. The article's behind a paywall, but we discussed it here — disapprovingly.

Lawyer wannabes

In Ron's post, he mentions a New York Times piece written by two states' chief justices (NH and CA) that calls for the "unbundling" of legal services — namely, more do-it-yourself work by would-be clients. Revolutionary legal-learning genius Susan Cartier Liebel covers this in more detail at her Build A Solo Practice @ SPU. It all comes down to what your clients need. Third prediction: this DIY lawyering will becoming a growing trend. Look at WebMD. Lawyers have to stop thinking of themselves as special, as members of a priestly caste.

As our clients dabble with being do-it-yourself lawyers, we need to become more entrepreneurial. Big-hearted and big-minded Tim Baran of uMCLE talks about this killer app of a personality trait. Over at Wired GC, John Wallbillich explains how law firms need to look at their business models right now, before it's too late.

Client says what?

You can tell from the title of this blog that it's supposed to be focused on clients. Similarly, Dan Hull's ecletic and passionate What About Clients? reminds us to always ask that question (except when it's called "What About Paris?"; I haven't figured that out). The current post (by Holden Oliver) admonishes lawyers to get over themselves and act like professionals ... focused on clients. Likewise, the always-inspiring Carolyn Elefant tells us at My Shingle to see our clients as our new partners, and she does it convincingly without irony or cliché.

Also sidestepping the dangers of an overused phrase, change agent and quixotic Toronto Blue Jays fan Jordan Furlong explains at Law 21 what it really means to be a "trusted advisor." Jordan makes the fourth prediction: that lawyers will be competing with other service providers for clients' dollars (even Canadian ones), and that our lawyerly sense of service and trustworthiness will be competitive advantages.

Over at Legal Ease Blog, Allison Shields warns lawyers to be specific, meaningful, and realistic in setting goals for the new year. Heather Milligan at Legal Watercooler advocates a daily resolution for marketing over a yearly one. And the musically clever Jared Correia over at Mass. LOMAP instructs lawyers to resolve to maintain client contact. It sounds so simple, and yet we all end up letting it slip.

Benched

This past year has been brutal on associates at firms big and small, with nearly 5,000 reported layoffs. Law Shucks has done an incredible job of basically becoming the National Bureau of Economic Research (in a good way) when it comes to law firms, who are usually stingy with their information. Fifth prediction: Law Shucks will become the new NALP (also in a good way). And here's what the incomparable Elie Mystal at Above the Law has to say about the old NALP:

I don’t know. Increasingly, I’m of the belief that the old system just needs to be blown up and a new one should be built from scratch. How can a firm make a realistic hiring decision nearly two years in advance based on one year of law school? How can a law student make an informed choice when firms straight-up lie to them?

Elie is a wise, funny man. And speaking of funny men and making realistic hiring decisions years in advance, how's NBC's 2004 decision to hire Conan O'Brien to host "The Tonight Show" in five years look now? Does the word "d'oh" mean anything to you? Here's some advice, for TV networks and law firms alike: hire people when you need them, not when you think you might need them in a few years.

All these layoffs have had many unforeseen consquences, such as diminishing participation in lawyers' sports leagues. The Am Law Daily reports that some basketball and softball leagues are down as much as 30 percent since last year. Sixth prediction: Participation in laid-off lawyers' leagues will continue to rise.

Don't weep too much for laid-off associates. As Larry Ribstein at Ideoblog writes, lawyers are paid too much. They're also paid too little.

Don't say "pursuant to"

If we're looking into reinventing the legal business, we should spend some time rethinking how we write. Lawyers use words like carpenters use hammers and nails. Except that they tend to use too many nails, and the nails are often fancy, overpriced, weak, feckless, and pompous (OK, maybe I went too far with the nail metaphor at "pompous"). Mister Thorne at Set in Style explains how lawyers are authors, and like all authors, need editors. If you care about writing, you should be reading Mister Thorne. (I swear he's the only person I call "Mister.") Over at Feminist Law Professors, Ann Bartow offers some hysterical media examples of why every writer needs a good editor. ("I never thought to look in the sandwich.") Meanwhile, The Namby-Pamby, Attorney at Law, shows that even potty-mouthed plain English is better and more readable than legalese. It's an important lesson, motherf@*&!%.

Social (media) security

It used to be that lawyers just had to write briefs, memos, and letters. Then in the nineties (the ironic ones, not the gay ones), lawyers started writing emails. Now, social media has opened up a whole new world of words for lawyers. And pictures and videos too. But lawyers are conservative, wedded to tradition and bound by precedent. Turns out that lawyers have been a little slow in embracing Web 2.0. Award-winning blogger Robert Ambrogi notes at Legal Blog Watch that only 29 of the Am Law 100 firms have vaguely active Twitter accounts, and only nine of them tweet regularly. Seventh prediction: Law firms will be dragged kicking and screaming into Twitterville. Not being on Twitter in the tens will be like not being in Martindale-Hubbell in the nineties (ironic ones). And still being in Martindale in the tens will be like being booked as a guest on "The Jay Leno Show" ... at ten o'clock. (Actually, the new Martindale is really LinkedIn, where you absolutely have to be, with a complete profile and headshot. Do it now. I'll wait. Mine's here.)

Molly DiBianca at Delaware Employment Law Blog lists her three principles for being a good social-media citizen: community, conversation, and transparency. Similarly, pioneering Twitter interviewer Lance Godard of 22 Tweets says that social media is all about connecting, contributing, and community. Check out his slideshow on social media here.

The brilliant Michelle Golden at Golden Practices wants to make sure that we're not turning people off with negative postings and status updates. Stephen Seckler at Counsel to Counsel advises that social media has to be a part of a firm's marketing plan. He's right. But Twittering lawyer extraordinaire Adrian Dayton at Marketing Strategy and the Law warns that Twitter is not a game to see who can get the most followers; they have no cash value. If they did, Adrian would be one of the wealthiest lawyers on Twitter.

The blawgerati

Lawyers have been somewhat more social-media savvy when it comes to blawgs, as you can see from all these excellent links. Besides Blawg Review, there are many other sources for aggregated links. The Brits are trying their own new version of Blawg Review with UK Lawyers Blog of Blogs, with the first edition hosted by Michael Scuff (see above). The ABA has a good collection (by Joshua Poje) with the Practice Management Advisors blog roundup. Blogging in-house lawyer Colin Samuels has what he calls "A Round Tuit" at Infamy or Praise. A terrific link collector, Colin is also a "sherpa" for Blawg Review. Walter Olson at Overlawyered, the original law blogger (since 1999, which makes him the Homer — as in Odyssey, not Simpson — of law blogging), always has a great roundup of legal news that will often make you spit-take your coffee.

Lawyers can provide a great clearinghouse for information. Conveniently named Ernie the Attorney (what would his parents have called him if he had been destined to be a plumber?) has a terrific post telling us his favorite sources for information.

Of course, not all law blogs are created equal. Social-media-for-lawyers guru Kevin O'Keefe, who writes Real Lawyers Have Blogs, takes issue with the so-called blogs that West Publishing–owned FindLaw puts out. As Kevin shows, these are not real blogs posts, but rather search-engine-optimized ads for its lawyer-directory service posing as actual content. In an indirectly related story, knowledge-management expert Greg Lambert of 3 Geeks and a Law Blog reports on how West has laid off a third of its law-library-relations team. Eighth prediction: The traditional providers of legal information — now freely available on the Web — are headed the way of the billable hour: West, Lexis, Martindale-Hubbell, and others. Their time has passed. They could save themselves if they could get ahead of this wave, but like newspapers and video stores, they're showing no sign of doing so. Already, Google is starting to make free online legal research available. Rick Georges over at Futurelawyer argues that law-book publishers are in the same kind of danger from e-books. Bruce MacEwen, who writes the always-excellent Adam Smith, Esq., boldly predicts which industries will survive the digitalization of the tens before making his Cassandran warning for our little industry.

There's an app for that (of course)

Soon it won't be enough for lawyers and law firms to have a website, a blog, a Twitter presence, a LinkedIn listing, and maybe a Facebook fan page. You're also going to have your own iPhone app. Jeff Richardson at iPhone J.D. shows how a couple of firms are already doing it. At last week's Consumer Electronics Show, according to tech blog Cult of Mac, a panel said that businesses must have a mobile app or "they don't exist." As for the iPhone itself, Enrico Schaefer at The Greatest American Lawyer has just gotten his own, and is declaring the BlackBerry platform dead for lawyers.

Gerry Riskin at Amazing Firms, Amazing Practices wonders whether we'll soon be delivering our marketing materials on a slatelike device. The video, which is a prototype demonstration of a fake but awesome slate, is worth a look ... at least until two weeks from now, when Steve Jobs (as rumored) introduces the Apple slate. Ninth prediction: He will, and it will completely change the way we interact with media.

R-E-S-P-E- ... aw, you can spell it yourself

One final thought, and then a final prediction. There is a theme in many of these posts, and while it's not always explicit, it's found in the best advice of these wonderful blawgers. It's this: treat people with respect. Respect for a client that goes with giving them an agreed-upon price — not a rate — before the work is done. Respect for different types of clients and what their needs are. Respect for associates to whom you promised jobs. Respect for readers of your written words, who have limited time and attention to devote to what you have to say. Respect for members of the social-media community that we're increasingly becoming a part of. And respect for people who are adapting to the forces of change in the new decade.

My last link is to our sister blog, Gruntled Employees, which discusses an interview with an airline executive who understood about respect: "If you treat me with respect, I'll do more for you." Seems like a fair trade.

And our last prediction, giving us ten for the tens: The Red Sox will win the 2010 World Series. They might have gotten a little weaker offensively, but it's a cardinal law of baseball that pitching and defense win championships.

Enjoy all these posts. Shepherd out.

• • •

Blawg Review has information about next week's host, and instructions how to get your blawg posts reviewed in upcoming issues.

Client Revolution hosting next week's Blawg Review

Hey, blawggers and blawg readers!

Actually, as I've said before, I'm not a fan of using the term blawg to mean "law-related blog." The problem with it is that blawg sounds exactly like blog. When you're speaking and you say "blawg," there's no way of conveying that you mean "law-related blog" without also saying something pedantic like "with an A and a W instead of an O." Yeesh.

Anywho, I'm honored to have been invited to host Blawg Review #246 on Monday. For those of you unfamiliar with it, Blawg Review is a blog carnival, which comes out every week and contains links to many other blog posts from the past week, often centered around a theme. You can see examples at the main Blawg Review site (but remember that the individual editions are hosted at the hosts' own blogs).

In preparing for this, I need your help. Please submit your favorite blawg posts of this week — either ones you wrote or ones you read. The Submission Guidelines are here.

In the meantime, think of me while you're watching the NFL playoffs this weekend; I'll be here crawling the blogosphere (blawgosphere?) looking for a few dozen gems to share.

The final Client Revolution post

That's it. I'm shutting it down. The party's over. After a year and three days, the Revolution is complete. Turns out, it was easier than I thought.

How do I know? Well, I read it in The Wall Street Journal. Tuesday's paper reported that large-firm lawyers had figured out how to deliver value to their clients. The secret? You'll never guess.

Web 2.0.

I know. Ironic, isn't it. Lawyers, who have been so reluctant to put down their buggy whips and typewriters and powdered wigs, have now connected to the Interwebs to help their clients get more value for their legal spend. (Brief aside: when did spend become a noun? Answer: it didn't.)

Nathan Koppel, who's one of the Journal's excellent legal-beat writers and whose work I've mentioned here before, penned the article. The title and subtitle say it all: "Using web tools to control legal bills: Big law firms turn to technology to provide clients with real-time expenses, automate tasks." (The link appears to get you to the article despite the usual WSJ subscription firewall.) (Update: Naah, it appears that Rupert has strengthened the pay wall. You apparently need a subscription.) The premise is that law firms are "turning to technology" to help their clients see how freakin' expensive they are. In real time. On the Interwebs. Two-dot-oh, baby! Woo!

Woo, indeed. Koppel describes how one huge firm has made their costs transparent:

Foley & Lardner LLP, a firm with 1,000 lawyers and offices throughout the U.S., has developed a Web-based system designed to provide its attorneys and clients with a real-time and comprehensive picture of legal costs.

From their desktops, lawyers at the firm enter and continuously track the amount of attorney time and costs that have been incurred on a particular matter. Foley clients have direct access to the data through a secure Web site, which also provides access to court filings and correspondence.

Now don't get me wrong. Foley's a fine firm with some world-class lawyers. And I respect that they, like some other firms, are trying. I don't mean to pick on them, but they're the star of the article. And I'm sorry to say that they're missing the point. Cue the boldface message:

Clients don't care one whit about attorney time and costs. They care about the value the services have to them.

Koppel goes on to describe how this system lets the lawyers or the clients "crunch data" to see if the firm is using the right mix of associates and partners. Two points here: computers may be, as they say here in Boston, wickit smaht, but they can't possibly tell anyone what the proper mix of associates and partners on a given matter at a given time is. And second: again, clients don't give a rolling donut about that, as long as the job gets done on time, done well, and for a price that's less than or equal to the value the client places on it.

The system also "pings" lawyers with automatic email alerts when a case reaches certain budget levels. Whoa. Paging George Jetson: your flying car is double-parked. Guys, I've been getting "automatic email alerts" from bookstores and coffeehouses for years. This isn't exactly groundbreaking.

Here's the money quote, showing how law firms just don't get it:

Recently the firm could see a certain lawyer was spending more time than had been projected to complete one aspect of a business transaction. Foley alerted the client, a global manufacturer, and asked the company whether it had anyone in-house who could do the work.

Instead, an agreement was reached to have a law student then clerking at Foley handle the task at a "very favorable billing rate," Mr. Kalyvas says.

ZOMFG! All right, where do I start? First: a lawyer was spending too much time. Uh, dudes. Lawyers at big firms don't qualify for bonuses unless they bill a certain number of hours, usually in the 1,800–2,000 range for a year. So you're giving lawyers a financial incentive to bill more hours, then having the Interwebs ping them when they're billing too many. Hmmmm.

Next: asking the client, "Uh, you guys got anyone who can do this?" Imagine if you went to a hospital and the doctor's Web 2.0 system pinged her saying it was costing too much and so she asked you, "Uh, can you just take care of this at home?" Uncool, guys, uncool.

Finally: "We'll hand it off to Billy the 2L. And we'll give you a good rate. He doesn't know anything, but he's feisty!" Uh, no.

This fancy system, like similar systems at other firms, doesn't do jack for the problem of making sure that clients get value. Having a computer tell you that a case is getting expensive doesn't give the client the power to do anything about it, other than moving their work elsewhere, doing it themselves, or putting their trust in Billy the 2L. Do you think for a minute that if a firm asked the client about these alternatives before they signed on that the client would say that that was fine? Not a chance.

Clients want to know the price beforehand — not when it's too late. Koppel writes:

Now when Foley attorneys turn on their computers, messages occasionally pop up on their screens reminding them that clients do not want to be surprised about their legal costs.

"That has helped focus our attorneys," [partner James] Kalyvas says, "and has created the willingness to change."

Sorry, guys. This isn't change. This is bells and whistles. This is a coat of paint on a busted old horse buggy. Change is open prices, where the client can decide if the cost matches the value before agreeing to the assignment. Pinging emails and Billy the 2L are not solutions to the problem of high legal costs or surprised clients.

• • •

All right, never mind. Despite what the Journal says, the Client Revolution isn't over after all. See you next time.

What does your law firm say about you?

No one ever got fired for buying IBM.

So goes the saying. What it really means is that buying a big-name product is generally seen as a safe bet, a lower-risk purchase. A cautious move.

The same thing is said about hiring big law firms. No one ever got fired for hiring Cravath. Or Sullivan & Cromwell. Or here in Boston, Ropes & Gray.

The logic goes this way: If your big law firm wins your case, then everyone says, "Well, of course they did. They're Cravath." And if they lose the case, everyone says, "Well, that can happen to anyone. No one wins all their cases."

But if your company chooses a smaller, lesser-known, perhaps-less-expensive boutique, the conversation goes differently. If they win your case, everyone says, "Well, it was a risky move. It's a good thing they won." And if heaven forbid they lose your case, everyone says, "Who the hell is Boutique Law Firm? And why didn't you hire Cravath?"

So risk-averse buyers of legal services buy the big-name firm, despite its being more expensive. In fact, they buy the big-name firm because it's more expensive. They go through a silent casuistry that goes like this: "The firm must be good because they charge so much. People wouldn't pay that much if it wasn't."

The truth is, we all do this. We ascribe qualities to products and services based on price and name recognition. Asked to choose between two glasses of wine, those of us who aren't oenophiles will usually say that the more-expensive one is better if — and only if — we know the prices beforehand. We buy status-symbol products because we think they're better, when in fact we're really buying them because they're more expensive.

Confessional time: I wear a Breitling watch. It was an anniversary gift from my lovely wife, but I got to pick it out. It's supposed to be a high-performance chronometer (not just a mere watch). Actually, it says it's a chronometre, which is better because it's in French. (Of the Swiss variety, of course.) It certainly seems to work well. But the truth is, I really don't know if it keeps better time than a Casio. And I've haven't fallen off a boat with it and sunk to 500 meters, so I can't really test if the claim in tiny letters on the face is true.

But if you held a gun to my head, I'd say ... well, I'd first say, "Whoa, what the hell's with the gun to my head?" — but then I'd tell you that the real reason I wear the Breitling is because it is expensive. (And because my lovely wife bought it for me.) It is a bit of a status symbol. Because people who notice it and know a little bit about watches will recognize it, and maybe they'll think I'm successful and good at what I do. I wear it because of what it says about me. Is it a good watch? Sure it is. It must be. People wouldn't pay that much if it wasn't.

What expensive things have you bought because of what they say about you? Clothes? Cars? A MacBook Air? An iPhone? Organic lettuce? A venti latte? Single-malt scotch? Share your own confessions in the comments.

But back to law firms. You might hire an expensive law firm because they really are the best. Or you might hire them because it says you can afford an expensive law firm. Or because it says you made the cautious choice, even if it was more expensive.

If you hired a discount law firm, what would that say about you?

And if you hired a law firm that used open, upfront prices based on the value of the desired result, what would that say about you?

One revolutionary year

Besides ushering in a new decade, today — January 1, 2010 — marks the first anniversary of The Client Revolution. It's been quite a year, both for this blog and for the concept of a client revolution. First, the blog:

In its first year, The Client Revolution has had just over 30,000 pageviews. In addition, nearly six hundred readers subscribe to the blog either by email or RSS reader. The ABA Journal named it to its "Blawg 100" list of "the 100 best websites by lawyers, for lawyers." To our subscribers and readers, I offer my sincere thanks and appreciation.

As for the Client Revolution — the concept: the economic turmoil of 2009 has accelerated the drive for change in the legal industry. Law-firm clients are increasingly dissatisfied with the status quo of hourly billing, legalese, and the legacy systems of a guild mentality. More firms — even the whitest of white-shoe firms — are at least paying lip service to the need to modernize the law-firm business model, if not actually acting. The Wall Street Journal Law Blog declared 2010 to be "the year of the flat-fee arrangement." While we prefer the term "open prices" (as opposed to the hidden prices that hourly billing creates), we appreciate the sentiment.

The question I get most often from law-firm lawyers is "How do you set your prices?" Funnily enough, it's also the same question I get from law-firm clients. Both groups want to know more about open-price lawyering, but they don't know where to start. So today, my commitment to you is to make this blog more of a resource for you — outside counsel, inside counsel, and clients — to help you figure out how to value and price legal services. I'll need your help, though, through your comment and questions and tweets. Share with me your questions and your ideas, your concerns about hourly billing and your fears about open pricing. In turn, I'll devote this site to answering those questions and allaying those fears.

One final note: Yesterday marked the third anniversary of the last hour that my firm, Shepherd Law Group, billed. We haven't missed timesheets and hourly billing. Over the past three years, our clients have gotten the benefits of a modernized law-firm business model. Many have saved tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal costs as compared to hourly billing, with the same or better quality than they would get at a large law firm. (And that's not just me talking: the peer-review panel of Law and Politics magazine has cited each and every lawyer who has ever worked at Shepherd as a "Super Lawyer" or "Rising Star.") And ours is a litigation practice (defending employers), which the naysayers say can't be done on a fixed-fee basis. Think again.

Lawyers: if we can do it, so can you. Clients: if our clients can enjoy the benefits of open prices, so can you. Let's make 2010 the year the Client Revolution goes into full swing. Happy New Year, and thanks for reading.