Can lawyers learn from Apple's top designer?

In Objectified, Gary Hustwit's fine documentary on product design, famed Apple designer Jonathan Ive talks about the proper role of design: to do something useful, then get out of the way. Specifically, he's talking about the battery indicator on a MacBook Pro, and how it lights up only when needed.

What does this have to do with pricing legal services? Plenty. Here's Ive:

And if you think about it, so many of the products that we're surrounded by, they want you to be very aware of just how clever the solution was.... 

But at some level, I think you're aware of a calm and considered solution that therefore speaks about how you're going to use it, not the terrible struggles that we as designers and engineers had in trying to solve some of the problems.

Now substitute "lawyers" for "designers and engineers." When we bill by the hour, we focus on the time we spend doing the work, and on the work itself. Lawyers think that clients care about the time and the work, but they don't. They care about the results. They care about their problems getting solved. By obsessing (in our bills) on the hours we spent and the work we did, we are doing exactly what Ive is talking about. Instead of focusing on the solution, we are trying to get the clients "to be very aware of just how clever the solution was."

If instead you fix your prices, the focus shifts from the hours "to the calm and considered solution," as opposed to the "terrible struggles" (read "billable hours") we had trying to solve the problem.

Lawyers: Don't you want your clients to be impressed with how easy it was for you to solve their problems, rather than how how hard it was?

Do you agree? Disagree? Can lawyers learn from designers? Sound off in the comments.

By the way, the movie Objectified is available on iTunes.

BTW, this post was written entirely on an iPad 3G. Photo credit: Apple Inc.