Flat Fee vs. The Billable Hour

Any new solo has to determine whether to go with the billable hour, a flat fee arrangement, or other alternative fee structures. At this point in my solo practice, all of my clients have been involved in the entertainment industry. Although I have extensive experience in litigation, motion practice, etc., the work I’ve been focusing on in my new practice has been primarily transactional in nature. For example, I’ve been asked to prepare representation agreements, management agreements, distribution deals, label license agreements, and so forth. Because I already have a sense of how long it will take me to prepare these sorts of agreements, I’m able to project the approximate amount of work involved in each project. As a result, I’ve opted for flat fee billing for these projects. This has been a popular choice with my clients who appreciate the certainty of flat fee billing. For many of them, like many small businesses, it is comforting to know in advance how much the work will cost them. For these projects specifically, flat fee billing was an obvious choice. However, for other work, it may make less sense.

How Much Should I Charge?

When deciding your rate you have to consider many factors. For example, if your practice is new, you’ll likely want to offer a lower rate to provide an additional incentive to new clients. As a result, they may want to retain you because they can get an experienced attorney at a rate below what they would otherwise have to pay.

Another important aspect of this issue is the nature of your clients. As young musicians and small record labels, many of my clients wouldn’t be able to afford my old rate. It’s an industry I’m passionate about and I enjoy the work. As a result, at the moment, I decided I was willing to work below my normal rate in order to perform the type of work I am passionate about and enjoy.

If you do choose to perform work on a flat-fee basis, you have to be certain to consider all of the work involved in accepting a case (as discussed more in the next section).

What Work Do You Charge For?

The next question I found that I would have to confront is what work to charge for. As a truly solo attorney with no staff, I have to handle every aspect of the case from organizing my files, preparing retainer agreements, and offering initial consultations. Consultations alone present the issue of whether or not to charge for them. Many of these initial consultations take significant time. There are many options available including offering free consultations, offering paid consultations, and offering a paid consultation that is applied towards the final bill if they decide to hire you. Because of the nature of the work I’ve been retained to do so far (i.e. drafting contracts), I’ve opted to offer free consultations.

But it’s important to remember that each case also may involve work such as drafting a unique retainer agreement, research, later revisions of the work performed, filing & service, travel time, and more. Whether or not you choose to work on a billable hour or a flat-fee agreement, you’ll need to consider the amount of time involved in performing these tasks.

Retainers

A final consideration is whether or not to require a retainer before you begin work. Factors that might influence this decision include whether you’ve worked with this client before, their financial position (if known), and even their geographic location. Personal factors can even be an issue. For example, in some cases I already have established relationships with some of my clients through my other business. In those cases, I require a smaller retainer than for clients who I’ve had no experience working with.

Your Feedback

As you can probably tell, defining my billing policies is still a work in progress. I’d truly appreciate any feedback or comments other solos can offer as to what has worked for them and what hasn’t. Let me know in the comments.

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In a post on Twitter’s blog this past Monday, they announced a new weekly email digest feature called Stories that will provide a summary of the most relevant Twitter posts that were shared by the people you follow. Stories will look a lot like the newly updated Discover tab that you can find in the upper left corner of your Twitter page. In other words, you’ll see post headlines along with the pictures of who shared the story to help you decide which of the posts in Stories you are most interested in. Stories will also provide users the ability to Tweet the article directly from the email as well as the ability to view related tweets. Twitter also noted that Stories will also include some of the most popular Tweets by people you don’t follow, so long as those Tweets were viewed by the people you do follow. The idea behind this feature, presumably, is to allow you to discover content that was popular within your network and thereby allow you to simultaneously discover new people to potentially follow on Twitter.

Twitter is rolling out Stories via email to users slowly over the next few weeks. If you’d rather Twitter not send you Stories, you can opt out of this feature by going to Notification Settings and un-clicking the box for “A weekly digest of Stories & Tweets from my network”.

Are you excited about this new feature, or will Stories just be another piece of unread junk mail in your inbox? Let me know what you think.

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1. Keep is simple.

Keep your website simple. For example, there is no good reason to use flash on a law firm’s website. Beyond the fact that it is unnecessary, it may make your site inaccessible to visitors using popular devices such as iPhones or iPads. It’s also not easily indexable for search engines, lowering the odds that visitors will find you through a Google search.

In general, before adding any element to your page ask yourself: “Is this necessary?” If the answer is “no” or you can’t find a good justification for the element, then remove it. Simplicity is key to creating an easy to navigate website that quickly shares your firm’s central message.

2. Make sure visitors understand your practice areas and specialties.

Right from the beginning you should clearly state what practice area you engage in, the types of individuals you represent, and the work you do. There are two important reasons for this. First, a visitor should understand what type of law you practice as soon as they land on your page. Otherwise, they may quickly navigate away from your page. Second, by including key terms in your page, you increase the odds of receiving traffic from Google or other search engines.

3. Make sure visitors know how to find you and contact you.

Be sure to include a statement indicating the geographic location of your practice. Again, this will help visitors make a decision as to whether or not your practice suits their needs. Additionally, it will increase the odds that your page will appear in search results if a potential client runs a search for (in example): “entertainment lawyer in San Francisco.”

It’s equally important you provide easy to find contact information including your email address and phone number on your site for potential clients, opposing counsel, and others. This way visitors know how to find you when seeking your services.

4. Make sure clients know why they should hire you.

This may be your only opportunity to convince a visitor to your site why they should hire you instead of another attorney practicing the same area of law, so take advantage of this opportunity. If your background or skills make you uniquely qualified to represent clients in your practice area, let them know what that background and skills are.

5. Avoid being generic.

It’s also good to let a little of your personality shine on your website. I recommend avoiding the use of cliche image as such as gavels, scales or law books. Of course it is your call, but I believe your website should help you stand out from other firms.

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Since starting my own practice my concerns have changed as an attorney. I no longer worry about reaching some billable hour goal, but instead worry about networking and marketing my firm. As a result, I spend more and more time attending networking events to meet colleagues and potential clients. And after spending a week at the South By South West Music Conference or even a whole day at San Francisco Music Tech Conference, I return home with a tall stack of business cards. As you can imagine, I’ve quickly discovered the value of a good card reader app for my Droid and iPad.

CardMunch
CardMunch absolutely sets the bar by which all business card readers should be judged. It’s easy to use, accurate, attractive and free of any major bugs. Plus, because CardMunch was acquired by LinkedIn, it integrates seamlessly with LinkedIn.

All you have to do is use the app to take a picture of a new business card. It sends the business card to CardMunch where it is manually transcribed ensuring high accuracy. The photo of the card appears in your CardMunch contacts section along with the transcribed information from the card,  and information from the contact’s LinkedIn account including connections, summary, specialties and experience. The business cards can then be added to your iPhone’s contacts list and the app allows you to easily connect with the contact on LinkedIn.
I sat down with a stack of business cards I’d collected at recent networking events and added them to CardMunch. Adding cards to CardMunch was very easy and very quick. Because the cards are manually transcribed it took a little while before I received the results, but I’d received most of them within an hour of submitting them. Honestly, I can’t say enough good things about my experience with the app. Best of all, it is completely free.

My only complaint is that it isn’t available for Droid at this time. As a result, I tested it on my iPad.

CamCard
CamCard is an attractive and easy to use alternative to CardMunch that is available on both the iPhone and iPad. Unlike CardMunch, CamCard relies on optical character recognition to pull information from your card. It’s quite impressive in many ways. You simply take a picture of the business card you want to add to your contacts and relying on OCR, the app reads and transcribes it to the app in seconds.

It’s honestly a more attractive app than its competitor and arguably slightly easier to navigate. Because your card isn’t being sent off to be transcribed, it’s also quicker than CardMunch. However, in my trial run with the app there were errors of varying degrees on each card I tested. On at least two occasions it listed the company name as the name of the contact and listed the contact’s name under the heading company. On several occasions it misspelled the name of the company. On one occasion it actually included too many numbers in the contact’s phone number. Nonetheless, it does make editing fairly easy. The free version of the app (a.k.a. CamCard lite) is limited in a number of respects including a 10 card a day limit. The full version is $6.99.

To be quite honest, I preferred CardMunch to CamCard. However, if you are using a Droid then CamCard is your best bet. With that said, I have a Droid X and an iPad, and I’ll probably continue to use CardMunch on my iPad.

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Today was a busy, but otherwise unexceptional day for me, but serves well to highlight a few of the tools I use to stay productive on the go. When I woke up, my “to do list’ included 1) managing the production and shipment of subscription boxes for my other business, 2) a networking opportunity with a colleague in downtown San Francisco, 3) drafting a blog post for The Sociable Lawyer (yup, this very post you’re reading), 4) drafting a blog post to write for my other site, and 5) keeping all of my social media platforms buzzing with activity. Thankfully, I didn’t have any pressing deadlines on my case work for my law practice. Nonetheless, it was a lot of work to accomplish in one day and I was able to use various tools to complete my work.

I started the morning with a cup of coffee and sat down at my computer.  I spent about 30 minutes reading my Twitter stream before using Tweetdeck to schedule tweets to go live at random points throughout the day (a task which took just about half an hour). I then spent about an hour reading emails and visiting my LinkedIn Groups in order to read new posts and contribute a comment on a recent discussion about a recent copyright lawsuit between Google and Java. I wasn’t familiar with the case, but I was able to view the brief online thanks to a link from Wired. In the discussion, one of my colleagues in the Group suggested that perhaps copyright protection should be extended to the creator of a programming language if for no other reason than because of the amount of effort involved. This reminded me of a case in law school that rejected a grant of copyright for “sweat of the brow” (i.e. granting copyright merely because of the effort put into the work regardless of the originality of the work). A visit to Google Scholar allowed me to quickly identify Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co. which rejected the possibility of granting copyright on the basis of effort alone. After reviewing some additional relevant case law and the U.S. Copyright Act, I was satisfied that I was prepared to engage with the Group and leave an intelligent comment. I consider it important to read LinkedIn Group discussions in order to stay informed on issues relevant to my practice groups. Similarly, I also believe it’s important to engage with other lawyers in your practice area in order to enhance your reputation and expand your professional network.

Afterwards, I spent several hours coordinating all of the international orders for my other business. To be honest, the work I performed for my non-legal business presented me with the least number of opportunities for utilizing social media and new technology. Specifically, this work included preparing a few hand-written notes to new purchasers, filling out customs declaration forms, and hand packaging boxes. By the time the first boxes were ready to go out the door, it was time to head downtown for my 12:30 meeting. I pulled up the public transit and scheduled the time for my trip downtown.

While waiting for the bus I used my phone to read and respond to a few emails. This is something most lawyers have been doing since the Blackberry was introduced, so I don’t consider this particularly tech-forward. However, I brought my iPad, and using Evernote, I was also able to prepare the first draft of this blog post on my commute downtown. This included using the Droid Law app on my phone to look up the link and citation for the Feist case I referenced earlier in the article. I arrived at the meeting and had lunch with my colleague. He presented me with his business card. Because I’ve been known to misplace a business card or two in my time, I discretely took a picture of his card with Evernote, thereby adding it to my account where it would be impossible to lose and easy to find later on.

On the way home, I worried that the day was already getting away from me. I had plenty to work to complete, and of course I wanted to stay productive, so I continued work on this post in Evernote. By the time I’d arrived home I’d completed several revisions and it was closer to final form. In case you are wondering, if I’d been driving instead of taking public transit, I could have used either Evernote or Dragon Dictation to dictate this post. Meanwhile, TweetDeck was posting my scheduled posts from this morning, thereby keeping me active in my social media network.

Ultimately, I finished the bulk of this post and my other activities with plenty of time to work on my case work and prepare a post for my other site. All and all, I felt very productive by the end of the day.

So this is an example of how I used technology and social media to accomplish as many tasks as possible in a brief period on an entirely unremarkable day. I’d love to hear your tips and strategies for using smart phones, tablets and productivity apps to enhance your practice. Leave me a comment.

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Now that I’m a solo attorney it’s different. After all, it’s more important than ever for me to stay up-to-date on changes in the law. After all, it’s my reputation on the line. If you’ve also made a move to solo practice, you’re probably also becoming aware of the importance and difficulties of staying informed in changes to the law and your industry. For my part, I don’t subscribe to any legal newspapers, I’m not signed up for any daily email summaries (or at least not directly), and no one is going to flag important cases for me to read. Without question, it’s entirely up to me to keep myself abreast of new developments.

I’ve found that in addition to reading law blogs, LinkedIn Groups has been extremely effective for me in that regard. I’m a member of several highly active groups that discuss issues relevant to my areas of practice including groups for entertainment lawyers, California based solo practitioners, legal industry bloggers, brand licensing professionals, and intellectual property lawyers. Because these groups each have a large number of attorneys participating in the groups, I not only find posts about recent developments in those areas, but I’ll also find lively discussion evaluating the “meaning” of new case law, statutes, and other important developments in those industries. It’s pure gold as a source for informations and news.

Not only are these groups more interesting than the daily email summaries I used to receive, they are more informative since I’m able to participate in and listen in on opinionated attorneys I respect discuss these topics. Whether you are a solo practitioner or not, I highly recommend you start making use of LinkedIn’s Groups. Oh, and if you actually like those daily email summaries, you can set up LinkedIn so that you receive a summary of the most popular discussions in your groups sent to your inbox each morning.

If you haven’t ventured into LinkedIn Groups before, it’s easy. First, on the home page, the search bar on LinkedIn defaults to searches for people. It can be changed by clicking on the word “people” next to the search bar. Select groups and then use keywords to search for groups in your practice areas. I recommend joining the most active groups relevant to your practice areas. Once you visit a Group’s page you’ll find recent updates and the most popular discussions. Spending a little bit of time each day reading through and following the discussions will go a long way in keeping you up-to-date in changes in your practice groups.

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If you’ve been taking my advice there is a good chance you’ve started a legal blog to promote your law practice, engage with potential clients, and to expand your reputation as a lawyer. And if you do maintain a blog to promote your practice, you’re probably using social media tools such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to promote your blog posts. But, presuming you are using social media to promote your website or blog, you might wonder how you can measure the effectiveness of your social media outreach. Thankfully, Google Analytics has just made that easier.

In the Google Analytics April 2012 Monthly Product Update email, Google announced a host of new features including the ability to track you effectiveness of your social media campaign.

When you login to Google Analytics you can find the new information by following the “Traffic Sources” tab in the lefthand column. Under “Traffic Sources” you’ll find an expandable tab titled “Social.”

The “Sources” tab lists a breakdown summary from which social media sites you’ve received traffic. In other words, it provides you the exact number of visits you’ve received in the past month from sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and more. Below that, the “Pages” tab provides detailed information about which pages have benefitted the most from your social media outreach. Clicking on a page’s link will tell break down the specific source from which traffic to a specific page originated.

The tab for “Social Media Flow” provides you an attractive diagram that demonstrates the flow of traffic from various social media sources such as Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter to specific pages on your site. You can then follow the flow of traffic as they visit other pages on your site to discover what page they interacted with after visiting your home page.

This information can be extremely important in growing your site because you can learn which aspects of your social media strategy have been effective, which haven’t been effective, and which sources can be improved.

If you’re interested in learning more about how you can use Pinterest to promote your practice, check out my Pinterest for Attorneys primer. If you want to discover the value of using Twitter to promote your practice, check out my post explaining how attorneys can use Twitter to promote your practice. Finally, if you’d like to learn how to use Facebook to better promote your practice, check out my post on the topic.

How will the expanded Google Analytics change your social media strategy?

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Many lawyers find entering solo practice to be an exhilarating experience. This was certainly the case for Pasadena, California-based attorney William DeClercq after entering solo practice last December: “This is the most fun I’ve ever had… by a lot. It’s shocking. It has reinvigorated my whole view of what it means to be a lawyer.”

After graduating from UCLA School of Law in 2005, and subsequently passing the bar that same year, DeClercq started his practice working in Big Law. Increasingly though, DeClercq began to feel that life in a big firm wasn’t for him. As a result, he moved to a California-based firm to breathe new life into his career. And he excelled at his new firm, having even received a “Super Lawyers” designation during that time. Still, he continued to feel like something was missing from his career. After talking with a friend who had recently entered solo practice, DeClercq thought to himself: “You can do that?” Not long thereafter, DeClercq set out to hang his own shingle.

Late last year he founded DeClercq Law Group in Pasadena. Before founding his own practice, he’d already earned significant experience while representing clients that ranged from new entrepreneurs to Fortune 500 companies. Now, less than a year old, his new practice has already applied that experience towards successful resolution of a variety of interesting new cases for a diverse range of clients. He specializes in business litigation and real estate law, and, in that regard, he’s already been involved in landlord-tenant disputes, partnership dissolution, labor and employment matters, and real estate lawsuits.  But he’s also enjoyed providing small business clients with general business advice; providing borrowers with loan modification tips; and helping partnerships resolve unanticipated business disputes. He’s also proudly accepted a number of pro bono cases which he describes as his “civic duty.”

Unsurprisingly, the demands of solo practice have presented some interesting challenges for DeClercq. Like all new businesses, DeClercq has had to find creative solutions to keep his revenue high and overhead low. For example, a shared office space and a simple, cost-effective website have helped him achieve the goal of keeping his overhead low without having to sacrifice productivity or the quality of his work.

Of course, many attorneys will recognize that the true challenge is continuously generating new business. DeClercq says that the trick for him has been to “fish in as many ponds as I can.” Namely, DeClercq has accepted contract work from other firms in addition to the business his firm has generated organically from referrals and word of mouth. DeClercq also noted that Rocket Lawyer’s On Call program has been a great source of new work for his office. For example, he noted that in the past month he has received about a dozen calls as a result of the program. About half of those calls have led to paying clients.

So, having successfully developed a thriving young practice, what’s been the best part of entering into solo practice? “I’m excited to go to work everyday. I’m excited about being a lawyer,” says DeClercq.

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Of course it was a conscious effort, but I’ve never really had trouble staying productive as an associate. I tried to be diligent. When things would get slow, I’d start by reexamining my files to make sure I had everything pinned down. If everything appeared to be in order on my cases then I’d ask for more work. And, if that failed, I’d ask other associates if they could use a hand on any of their cases. I billed nearly 2,100 hours a year while working as an associate on top of blogging five days a week. Truthfully, I’m probably happiest when I’m busy.

The battle to stay productive has changed in some ways now as a solo practitioner. The emphasis is no longer on tackling one project after another to amass billable hours. Indeed, in my experience, the picture becomes infinitely more complicated as a solo practitioner, especially when that isn’t your only source of income. Getting my work done still isn’t a problem. After all, my motivation is clearer than ever. I want to do good work on my cases in order to develop my reputation and grow my practice. Not only that, but if I mess something up, it’s my reputation (and more) on the line.

The issue is that just getting my work done isn’t enough anymore. As a solo practitioner I recognize that I also have to motivate myself to promote the practice; market myself; and grow my business and reputation. This hasn’t been easy for me so far.

Arguably my two other ventures are both an asset and liability in that regard. Since I’ve started blogging for The Sociable Lawyer I’ve met many other attorneys through social media, over the phone, and in person. Many of these attorneys are like me in that they are solo practitioners who are looking to build or grow their practice. As any successful solo will tell you, referrals from other attorneys are a huge source of new business. So these connections are important. Indeed, I continue to recommend blogging for any solo attorneys who wants to develop their reputation. If you don’t want to start your own blog, you can contribute to another blog. For example, we’re always happy to accept outside contributions that meet our guidelines (please, if you choose to submit, also remember that The Sociable Lawyer’s audience is other attorneys).

My other business, however, isn’t law-related. Luckily for me there is an overlap though. My specialty is entertainment law, and my other business is involved in the music industry. So although promoting, running and building my other business doesn’t directly promote my practice, the relationships I’ve developed in that arena have already led to work for my law practice. Still, the time I spend developing that business is time that I’m not dedicating to growing my law practice.

Morever, I know there is so much more I should be doing. I should be engaging with groups more often on LinkedIn. I should promote my practice more on Twitter and Facebook. I should attend more networking events. I do all of these things now, but I believe I can never network enough as a newly solo attorney.

I’m interested in hearing how other attorneys keep productive. What problems do you confront in your practice with regard to trying to stay productive? How do you manage your time? What advice can you provide to other attorneys who struggle to stay productive? Let us know in the comments.

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Indeed, some of the things I’ve learned since entering solo practice have made for good single topic posts. A few other examples include my post on “how to create a simple and cost-effective website for your new practice” and my post on “how to pick a name for your new law firm.” Yet, it’s occurred to me that it also might be beneficial to share my more generalized experiences with you too. Both the good and the bad; as well as the topics that I’m not far enough removed from to offer meaningful advice. After all, it just might help other attorneys who choose to go solo and also provides a great opportunity for you to share your experiences with me and the rest of the community. For those reasons, I intend to post about my personal experiences from time to time as we go forward. I’d really like to hear your comments and about your experience on these issues.

One great example of an issue I’ve had to wrestle with since going solo, is the degree to which it’s good for your practice to rely on other sources of income. There are some attorneys who would urge new solos to avoid all other potential sources of income. The rationale is that starting a new practice is a lot of work and requires your complete attention. Additionally, they reason that the eagerness for work will encourage you to market, network and seek out new business.

Other attorneys will tell you that it is OK to supplement the income from your new practice with income from other sources. Indeed, from the discussions I’ve had and the blog posts I’ve read, it would appear that many attorneys keep their new practice afloat by accepting document review work, contract positions, and other odd jobs.

Going into my fourth month of solo practice, it’s become easy to understand both positions. I’ve personally relied on two additional part-time sources of income aside from my law practice since hanging my shingle. One hugely important benefit is that I’ve been able to enjoy a significant degree of financial stability while developing my solo practice. It’s comforting to know that if one (and maybe even two) of my income sources were to dry up, I’d still have that third income source to help cover student loans and bills. I’ve also not had to consider accepting cases or clients that don’t fit into my vision for my practice. Additionally, I’ve also been lucky in that my early leads for paid work came quick because I’d already been involved in the industry I wanted to represent. Finally, I’m also blessed in that I enjoy the work I perform for all three of the jobs I currently hold.

The downside, however, is that I’ve not been able to devote nearly as much time to marketing and growing my firm as I’d like. As any solo practitioner can tell you, a new firm requires a lot of work to get off the ground. Staying on top of the business of running a firm while continuing to offer excellent client service to my clients, in addition to my two other jobs, has thankfully proven to be something I can manage. Still, it definitely keeps me very busy. It certainly hasn’t left me with as much time as I’d like to grow my practice. This isn’t an insignificant concern either. A healthy book of business is essential to any law firm, and it is nearly impossible to maintain an active book of business if you aren’t actively promoting your practice.

If you are an attorney currently grappling with these issues too, or if you’ve already confronted these challenges, I’d really love to hear your thoughts. Leave me a comment and let me know how you’ve handled the balance between building a new practice and keeping yourself financially stable at the same time.

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