One of the most surprising take-outs from this year’s Altman Weil ‘Law Firms in Transition 2020‘ report is how little full freight fee collection is happening.
Keeping in mind that the collectable information in the report would have occurred pre-COVID, it is absolutely amazing to me that 98.7% of all hourly rates fees are now at “discounted hourly rates“.
To be fair, the term “discounted rates” is not defined and most law firms would argue – in this day and age – that they rarely get full freight rack-rate.
But it does make me wonder, if only 1.3% of your firm’s hourly rate legal fees are not discounted…
…why bother?
If becoming more progressive about how your firm prices is of interest to you then right now is the time to start thinking about this; because if all you are getting is 1.3% of your hourly rate fully realised…
…it’s time to start thinking outside the hourly rate pricing box!
As always, the above just represent my own thoughts and always interested to hear the views of others.
Photo credit to Damir Spanic on Unsplash
RWS_01's B[D]log 
Hi Richard,
I’m not 100% sure you’ve interpreted the data correctly???? I read it as most 98.3% of firms have some portion of their fees at discounted rates. 19.9% have between 1 and 10% of their fees earned on discounted rates. in other words between 99% and 90% on full rack rates. Even the last column, shows that 15.4% of firms earn more than 50% of the fees using hourly rates, or 50% or less at full rack rates. The median is 21 to 30% meaning between 70 and 79% of revenue on still on rack rates.
Cheers,
Joel
From: “RWS_01’s B[D]log”
Reply to: “RWS_01’s B[D]log”
Date: Monday, 6 July 2020 at 8:36 pm
To: Joel Barolsky
Subject: [New post] Altman Weil Survey: 98.7% of hourly rate fees are discounted
RWS_01 posted: ” One of the most surprising take-outs from this year’s Altman Weil ‘Law Firms in Transition 2020‘ report is how little full freight fee collection is happening. Keeping in mind that the collectable information in the report would have occurred pre-COVID”
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yeah – I have definitely interpreted this data as being only 1.3% of respondents’ revenue is derived from full fee rack rate (with no discount being applied). The remaining 98.7% of respondents revenue is varying degrees of discount on those rates from 1% to more than 50%.
All the best
R
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