Legal Questions

Recall those $1,000/hr billing rates that had the blogosphere buzzing last summer?  Turns out, they may really be worth only $900/hr  based on the results of a 2008 Fees and Pricing Benchmark Report released by Rain Today and summarized by Enricho Schaefer at Greatest American Lawyer.  According to the report, discounting is a common practice, with 76 percent of all firms discounting their published fees by an average of 9.9 percent.  And interestingly, larger firms are more likely to discount; 89 percent of firms with ten or more lawyers discount, versus only 59 percent of smaller firms.  Nearly half of the responding firms employ service guarantees which allow clients to reduce payment based on dissatisfaction with value received.

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