This is generally good advice, but I'd like to discuss #6 (double billing during travel) and #9 (overbilling on assignments). Both are highly unethical practices. I can't imagine that they're all that common, if only because in this day and age of electronic billing and sophisticated clients, it's so easy to get caught doing something like that.
As for #4 and #7, as a client you can probably get concessions given that it's a buyer's market for legal services right now.[1] But generally, I think those practices are legit. The cost of training is baked into the price of every product you buy, and legal services is no different. With regards to #7 specifically, that tends to be a situation where the junior lawyer who doesn't say anything on the call will be the one doing whatever work comes out of the call. It will cost you more money in the long run if he or she isn't on the call and has to get a download after the fact.
A better approach is to communicate via e-mail when possible and communicate directly with the associate doing your work unless the partner needs to be involved. This is kind of related to #2 and #10. Where I used to work, mid-level and senior associates would handle the day-to-day communications with the client for securities offerings or credit agreements worth tens of millions of dollars. If you retain a large firm where an associate will be doing most of the work on your matters, then find a team where the partner in charge is good at delegating the day-to-day stuff so you don't have to incur his higher rates for that sort of thing. Alternatively, depending on your needs, you might find a small outfit or even a solo practitioner who will be doing most of the work on your matter himself or herself, and doesn't need to deal with the inherent overhead of delegation.
[1] Given that, it might just be easier to skip the nitpicking and ask for a 10% discount on the final bill.
PS: What do people here thing about fixed fee arrangements? I'm not sure how they should be structured for a startup, but that would avoid a lot of the silliness inherent in billing. At the end of the day, there is a price to legal services based on supply and demand. Whether you charge for law students or raise the top line fee or give an across-the-board discount is ultimately cosmetic.
Fixed fee arrangements: You're more likely to get this from a smaller firm. The more clients a lawyer gets, the less likely he or she is willing to accept a fixed fee model. As a lawyer, I can say the reason we're reluctant to do fixed fee models is that a substantial portion of how much time we spend on things is not within our control. We'll often find out in the middle of a deal that, for example, a Company signed a problematic agreement without telling us, and that we now have to spending time fixing that agreement. It's hard to built this cost into a fixed fee arrangement (especially if we haven't had any prior dealings with this client). As that time comes at the expense of servicing other clients, many lawyers are reluctant to go this route.
That said, you should always ask for a ballpark estimate of how much any transaction will cost before going into it. This will give you leverage in negotiating the bill down if, for some reason, the bill ends up going over.
The cost of training is baked into the price of every product you buy, and legal services is no different
At $60/10min, they can take their lumps for training new staff, just like everyone else. If you call tech support, you're not charged extra when there's a trainee doing a ride-along. If you use retail, it doesn't cost more if a trainee cashier is serving you with a supervisor hovering over them. Having your car fixed doesn't cost more because an apprentice worked on it.
No other industry sees this sort of extra charge as reasonable, especially when there's so much fat built into the price to begin with.
It's not clear to me whether the issue was being charged an additional $200/hr for a ride-along law student, or being charged $200/hr for a law student's solo work.
I agree that charging extra for a ride-along simply doesn't seem fair. However, based on my experience, it's quite possible that the law student researched or wrote solo (billed at $200/hr), and then reported back to the lawyer with a finished product that only needed review (billed at $600/hr). Given the choice, I would much rather pay $200/hr than $600/hr.
I think she meant you paying $600/hr, and the lawyer delegating the whole task to the student (=increased chance of errors and bad work for the full price).
That would be a breach of ethical practice (billing the partner rate for work not done by the partner). Generally, the complaint about summer associates is billing for their work at all. Clients don't feel like they should have to pay $200-300/hour for the work of a law student. It's a reasonable complaint, and as a client you should try to get a good deal. That said, the billed rate is a fiction. Most time billed by summer associates is written off by the firm. When they do put together presentable work, the time will be marked down. E.g. some summer associate spent 10 drafting a simple document, the client will be billed for 2-3 hours or however long a junior associate would have taken to do the same task. Generally, of course.
> This is generally good advice, but I'd like to discuss #6 (double billing during travel) and #9 (overbilling on assignments). Both are highly unethical practices.
I think that absent very explicit disclosure and agreement, they'd be grounds for discipline by the bar. Certainly they read like an easy MPRE question.
As for #4 and #7, as a client you can probably get concessions given that it's a buyer's market for legal services right now.[1] But generally, I think those practices are legit. The cost of training is baked into the price of every product you buy, and legal services is no different. With regards to #7 specifically, that tends to be a situation where the junior lawyer who doesn't say anything on the call will be the one doing whatever work comes out of the call. It will cost you more money in the long run if he or she isn't on the call and has to get a download after the fact.
A better approach is to communicate via e-mail when possible and communicate directly with the associate doing your work unless the partner needs to be involved. This is kind of related to #2 and #10. Where I used to work, mid-level and senior associates would handle the day-to-day communications with the client for securities offerings or credit agreements worth tens of millions of dollars. If you retain a large firm where an associate will be doing most of the work on your matters, then find a team where the partner in charge is good at delegating the day-to-day stuff so you don't have to incur his higher rates for that sort of thing. Alternatively, depending on your needs, you might find a small outfit or even a solo practitioner who will be doing most of the work on your matter himself or herself, and doesn't need to deal with the inherent overhead of delegation.
[1] Given that, it might just be easier to skip the nitpicking and ask for a 10% discount on the final bill.
PS: What do people here thing about fixed fee arrangements? I'm not sure how they should be structured for a startup, but that would avoid a lot of the silliness inherent in billing. At the end of the day, there is a price to legal services based on supply and demand. Whether you charge for law students or raise the top line fee or give an across-the-board discount is ultimately cosmetic.