Since the legal sector hit a bottom during 2007, we have been hearing a lot about alternates to the billable hour. That was five years ago. Yet, now we hear from a survey by the Am Law Daily's ALM Legal Intelligence that the billable hour still dominates. It was conducted in April 2012.
Here in the report you will read that only about 6% of law firms use alternate fee arrangements for more than half their work clients and only 12% of in-house legal departments require them of outside law firms.
One way to understand this is that in B2B legal matters the stakes are so high that a brandname law firm with a track record for success in a certain practice can demand use of the billable hour. The same sort of thing is standard in my field of communications. A corporation in trouble or which wants to prevent trouble will pay the brandname public affairs or lobbying firm what is requested. Those are the accounts one wants to be a subcontractor for.
Currently, when it comes to public companies, analysts, shareholders, and the media don't agree about how much change there should be. I look at that for the financial information site Motley Fool. Here is how I have connected the dots.
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