fixed fee

A different take on the end of the Billable Hour

I have read a lot recently about how AI and ChatGPT in particular is going to kill the billable hour. That may well end up happening. What I do suspect though is that it is unlikely to happen soon. And if the billable hour is to be killed off, technology – such as AI and ChatGPT – may well play a part, but it will be the cultural/behavioural change that’s needed that will be the final nail in this coffin.

Don’t believe me?

Here is a quote (of kinds) by Aarash Darroodi, Fender’s General Counsel, at the recent Legal Marketing Association’s annual gathering in Hollywood, Florida:

…the mere fact that he’s being billed by the hour isn’t a problem — but that the billable hour’s implementation can be.

In other words, Darroodi doesn’t mind that his law firm(s) charge him (his company) by the hour, but he does mind if you take him for a fool.

And until this mindset changes, you’re not going to see the death of the billable hour anytime soon.

Darroodi’s comments on the RFP process – should clients do an “open day” before tendering?

While Darroodi’s comments on the billable hour were interesting, his comments on the approach law firms should take to the RFP process were even more insightful. To quote from the article:

[Darroodi] described receiving template-based RFP responses from law firms — an approach he called “fundamentally a mistake.”

Instead, he would like to see a law firm respond to an RFP with an offer to come look at the company’s operations in-depth, gaining a better picture of his organization before a proposal is prepared.

“First of all, it shows initiative on your part. It shows the fact that you care,” he said. “And plus, it shows us that you’re going to submit something that’s directly related to our existing organization.”

Now I’m more than sure that not all GCs will take this approach. And before everyone in Australia says this would likely breach procurement protocols (after the RFP has been issued), I know.

But, wouldn’t it be interesting – and just a little more relevant, if clients did an “open day” before they issued the RFP? Particularly in cases where the tender is by invitation only?

In my view it would certainly make sense and would undoubtably result in more directly relevant and related (and probably eminently more readable) tender responses.

If you want to read anymore on either of the issue above, go read ‘Why Curiosity Is Key For Business Development Observations from the general counsel panel at this year’s LMA meeting‘ by Jeremy Barker on the Above The Law website.

Not only is it highly insightful – so “thanks for posting it Jeremy”, but it contains this nugget – again from Darroodi – on his views about client events (and if you are anEvents Manager in a law firm, stop reading now 🤣):

“I don’t want to spend time with my lawyers,” Darroodi said to laughter, comparing the idea to hanging out with his dentist. 

Ouch!

In the meantime, if you need help with your pricing or RFP responses, feel free to reach out to me.

rws_01

‘Upfront pricing’: when is a ‘fixed fee’ not a ‘fixed fee’?

I recently read, with interest, an article by Emily McNutt in thepointsguy.com about Uber’s new ‘Upfront pricing’ model in the UK (see ‘Know before you go: Uber rolls out fixed pricing in the UK‘).

In short, as McNutt’s title suggests, Uber have introduced an ‘Upfront’ fixed fee pricing model option for its UK customers.

Wonderful news, and encouragingly McNutt writes:

“…with the introduction of upfront pricing, both the rider and the driver will know the exact cost of their trip before they confirm”.

As someone who enjoys knowing what I’m paying for upfront, this is nothing short of brilliant news (even though I don’t live in the UK nor use Uber 🙂 ).

But…

there’s only one small problem…

which is,

more often than not the rider actually doesn’t know upfront what they are paying for.

Why do I say that?

Well, because Uber UK’s ‘Upfront pricing’ offer comes with four [very small but somewhat important] scenarios under which the agreed Upfront price may change.

McNutt’s article sets these out as being:

  • If the rider adds or removes a stop in their journey;
  • If the final destination is more than one mile away from the originally requested destination;
  • If a detour is taken and the trip is further (40% and 0.5 miles further) and slower (20% and two minutes slower) than originally estimated; or
  • If the trip is at least 40% and 10 minutes slower in duration.

Let’s take a closer look at these:

  • If the rider adds or removes a stop in their journey – okay, on first read this one seems fair. But then I re-read this and saw ‘removes a stop‘; and asked myself: ‘How does removing a step make my fare more expensive (unless the change element here is to reduce the fare – which would be fair go!)?’
  • If the final destination is more than one mile away from the originally requested destination-again, seems fair. But it doesn’t say if this final destination is the ‘original’ final destination. If that is the case, why am I paying more for your miscalculation (see below)?
  • If a detour is taken and the trip is further (40% and 0.5 miles further) and slower (20% and two minutes slower) than originally estimated-not sure what a ‘detour’ is, but having been in the UK just before COVID I can tell you we did a lot of detours!

And so we come to bullet-point #4 – If the trip is at least 40% and 10 minutes slower in duration.

Here I have LOADS of issues.

As McNutt writes:

In other words, if you hit traffic and your trip has been extended by a significant amount of time, the fixed cost will likely increase.

Now that sounds a little wrong. A fixed cost that is allowed to increase because of a time-based element.

Taking a step back here, McNutt writes that:

Uber says that it bases the fixed price based on the best-available route between the rider’s pickup and dropoff points. It uses the expected duration and distance of the trip to come up with the exact figure, while taking into account anticipated traffic patterns and known road closures. Costs for tolls and additional surcharges will also be accounted for in the upfront pricing figure. When demand is high, Uber says it’ll account for that with “dynamic pricing” — a new take on surge pricing.

So Uber totally scopes the project, with information the rider likely doesn’t have access to (Google is good, but that good?), but then says: ‘If we got our calculation wrong, we get the right to readjust’.

To my mind this is essentially a ‘get of prison free’ card for Uber, which is fine – but let’s not then say this is Upfront fixed fee pricing, let’s call it out for what it actually is: a cost estimate at best.

And so why this post after so long away?

Well, no prizes for guessing what other (hint ‘professional services’) industry might have this type of fixed fee pricing mentality!!

As always, the above represent my own thoughts only and would love to hear yours.

rws_01

‘Annuity Revenue’ – who wouldn’t crave some financial certainty in current circumstances?

Annuity revenue – a predictable revenue stream from new or existing customers who buy products and services associated with new or previously purchased products. 

As the Managing Partner of a law firm today, what would you say if I walked into your office and told you that I could:

  • provide you with a guaranteed monthly revenue income,
  • with a product that creates loyal customers, and
  • where those customers become – at no additional cost to you – brand champions and refer your services to their network, free of charge, via the Holy Grail of marketing – positive ‘word of mouth’ referrals.

Sounds great doesn’t it. Almost too good to be true.

Well all I can say is that if you were anything like one of the Managing Partners servicing customers who responded to the Pitcher Partners recent ‘Legal Survey 2020 Report‘, that’s exactly what you would be saying: “thanks, but no thanks we are happy with the billable hour”.

Pitcher Partners - Billing Methods

The fact that the billable hour remains the ‘go to’ method of billing (not the same as pricing) for Australian law firms and their customers does not, in and of itself, surprise me. I must admit, however, to being a little surprised with the 1% increase in this billing method (up from 58% to 59%) year-on-year.

Given the times (even pre Covid-19), I was also a little surprised to see that both ‘fixed fee’ and ‘value-based’ pricing remain relatively static (although it should be added that from what I could see the report lacks a definition of ‘value-based’, probably purposely so).

To me this represents a massive lack of foresight on the part of law firms and a significant lost opportunity.

In much the same way as software as a service (SaaS) companies have come to realise that one-off payments around shrink wrap contracts were not servicing the long-term financial interests of the company (unless it’s a legacy product that will no longer be supported), the time has come for law firms (and professional services firms more broadly) to realise that if we want to maximise revenue and, potentially, profit we need to rethink how we generate that revenue.

One alternative that the likes of Ron Baker and Mark Stiving have been banging the drum about for some time is ‘subscription based pricing’.

The benefits of adopting a subscription based pricing model

I have posted previously on this blog about the benefits of subscription based pricing (see here), but leaving all that aside for a second; as Amy Gallo wrote way back in October 2014 in the Harvard Business Review (see ‘The Value of Keeping the Right Customers‘) with the acquisition costs of acquiring new customers running being between 5 and 25 times more expensive than servicing existing customers, it makes economic and financial sense to find, and keep, the right customers.

How you price this is probably the most important step along that path.

The weakness of having billable hours as your default billing method is that you are pricing to the transaction. Whereas one of the greatest benefits of the subscription based pricing model – or even a retainer based pricing model if you must at the start- is that you start thinking about pricing the customer or even the portfolio.

In other words, you start to think about the customer and their needs first. And for an industry that always talks about the customer being at the centre of everything we do, doesn’t it makes sense that our pricing structure reflect this claim?

But it also makes sense internally, because it:

  • is smarter pricing
  • leads to smarter collaboration
  • moves you away from seasonal end of financial and calendar year pressures, and
  • helps remove any discussion around the ‘commodity’ tag.

Not to say, in these COVID-19 times, when you are talking working capital facilities with your bank, it provides you with a guaranteed annuity revenue stream.

Now who would not want that comfort right now?!

These just represent my thoughts though and always interested to hear your views.

rws_01

Almost 20% of Australian law firms revenue is now coming from fixed fees

dreamstime_m_34802664

It has been a full six months since the last CommBank Legal Market Pulse (conducted by Beaton Research + Consulting) was published and from what I can tell from this latest publication, not very much has changed in that time.

While some members of the Australian legal publishing world have commented on the rising optimism (note this is “perception”, and this has gone from awful to not quite so awful), what grabbed my attention was a piece towards the end of the report (page 19) that states:

“Revenue is still predominantly derived from hourly rates. However, almost 20% of all firms revenue, irrespective of size, is now coming from fixed fees.”

I don’t have to hand data from 5 years ago that would allow me to do a comparison to see what this means in real terms, but given that IBISWorld puts the size of the Australian legal market at $23BN, that’s a lot of fixed fee generated revenue.

Somewhat surprisingly, there doesn’t appear to be a huge difference in the percentage of fixed fee revenue being derived at “top-tier” and “mid-tier” firms – with fixed fees accounting for 19.4% of revenue at top-tier firms and 19.2% among mid-tier firms.

The types of work for which fixed fees are being agreed/charged is also very similar – 88% for transactional matters at top-tier and 89% at mid-tier.

Notable, and surprisingly, is that top-tier firms would appear to be much more willing than mid-tier firms to offer fixed fees for litigation work – 50% to 33%.

But the test is always in the tasting (for wine lovers at least): so how good are Australian law firms at fixed fee pricing?

Well, not very if the data is to be believed. Asked for the margin on fixed fees relative to hourly rates, the responses were:

  • higher: 13% top-tier / 15% mid-tier;
  • lower: 0% top-tier (which seems a little hard to believe) / 56% mid-tier (which is probably being too honest)
  • about the same: 75% top-tier / 19% mid-tier; and
  • not sure: 13% top-tier / 11% mid-tier (which should be worrying some managing partners out there).

As well as finding out that Australian law firms are not very good at fixing fees, the report also tells us that over 67% of all law firm revenue still comes from standard hourly rates or discounted hourly rates. Here though, over 25% of revenue comes from “discounted” hourly rates – which begs the question: when do you start saying your discounted rates are your real rates?

Lastly, almost 3% of all law firm revenue now comes from retainer arrangements (2.6% for top-tier, 2.8% for mid-tier). Now that’s certainly something worth keeping an eye on!