Explore Sample Attorney Billing Descriptions for Enterprises

Sample attorney billing descriptions for enterprises

welcome to the legal premiere podcast i'm your host andrea seger and i'm dedicated to covering common legal issues for small business owners and just how some of the world's most elite entrepreneurs have handled issues themselves in true attorney fashion the information in this episode is not legal advice this is for informational purposes only and you should always consult with your attorney before implementing any of the information now onto the show hey there welcome back i hope you're having a wonderful tuesday i'm excited for this episode because it's pretty much why i started my own firm i did hourly billing at the old firm i was at and i absolutely hated it but before we get in a couple of announcements number one you can now text me yep i said that right you can text me and if you want to be notified of what was talked about here in today's episode get the links then text the word podcast to 832-225-3164 is texting me to my phone number you will get a personal text back from me you are talking directly to me but of course there is no attorney-client relationship there and i will not give you legal advice and a text message you must create an attorney-client relationship with me if you want actual legal advice but seriously text me the word podcast to 832-225-3164 i would love to chat with you now let's get into it so if you have ever worked with an attorney before then you most likely know that they usually charge hourly for their services so they're charging an hourly rate that means anytime they are working on your case or your matter they are charging you by the hour in typically six minute increments so if they spend two minutes drafting you an email then they're charging you for six minutes and if they are thinking about your email reading your email responding to your email they are billing for that time so they can kick back put up their feet on their desk and just close their eyes and think about your case for a few minutes and they will bill for that because they will say they were working on your case now hourly rates range it's a huge range and it's anywhere from two hundred dollars an hour to a thousand dollars plus per hour yes there are attorneys that get paid a thousand dollars per hour now it's not every attorney charging a thousand dollars per hour but there are some out there most that i work see charging hourly are anywhere from 200 to 400 an hour now even this can get really outrageous when i was at the firm that i was at i was literally just out of law school had no idea what the heck i was doing and the firm was billing me out at 220 an hour a baby lawyer basically first day out of law school and you had to pay 220 an hour for me to do anything with your case now that's research that's drafting that's you know writing anything doing document review and it was when i was at the big firm that i was at and i you know i clerked at other firms and i did hourly billing there but that was the highest rate that i was at when i started at that at the big firm that i was at and it was there that i started to see how annoying hourly billing was because you had to keep track of every second you were doing anything and i started to see how easy it was for clients to get scammed and screwed so basically when i was at the firm you know i would have a partner come give me an assignment they'd say hey you know we have this client i need you to do some research so you're researching this now make sure you take your time on this and you know basically telling me make sure you bill as much as you can on this matter and when i started to see that it was just it rubbed me the wrong way now i have a lot of integrity and i just did not feel right doing that so when i started thinking about going out on my own and having my own firm i wanted to look at other models and that's where i came up with the model for my firm and how we do our subscription billing our flat fee billing it came about because i did not like what i was doing at the other firm now don't get me wrong sometimes hourly billing is necessary so currently with my firm there are very very very few things that we do hourly billing for but there are some things that we do bill hourly for only because it's hard to predict how long it really is going to take us so litigation which is actual lawsuits and a lot of going back and forth that is something that typically does need hourly billing because you don't know how long things are going to take however there are still ways to get around that and within my firm the litigation that we do is trademark proceedings so within the trademark trial and appeal board that's all the litigation that we do we don't file federal lawsuits we don't file state lawsuits the only actual proceedings that we do are with the trademark trial and appeal board pretty much everything else is general counseling or filing trademark and copyright applications contract drafting that sort of thing we're more on the transactional side of things making sure that your business is fully protected not necessarily defending you or suing somebody that's all done only within trademarks now even with the little litigation that we do within the trademark trial and appeal board which is also known as the ttab we still do flat fee there with that we do a monthly rate for the typically for the duration of the proceeding so no matter how long the proceeding takes you're paying one flat monthly fee instead of you know maybe we would build two hours this one month and then the next month we would bill 20 hours you're paying one consistent fee and that helps our clients because we're working with small businesses and that helps them know exactly what they're paying every single month for the duration of these proceedings now that being said sometimes hourly billing is still necessary but it's very very rare with us now the number one reason why the hourly billing model just sucks is how easy it is for clients to get screwed and i mentioned this already but seriously there's three reasons why i really think that it's awful number one it's easy for clients to have to overpay if you've ever worked with an attorney or if you haven't this is what happens so the attorneys they keep track of all their time during the month and then typically like the first monday or the first week of the next month you'll receive a bill for the last month well within that typically the bill says you know unless you contest this within you know seven business days 14 business days then you're responsible for the full amount even that statement right there says the attorney expects you to push back and say look i'm not paying for this crap it should have taken you ten hours to research something when it should have just taken you two hours and that's the issue that i ran into in at the firm that i was at you know something would take me 20 minutes to research and they're like oh no no go spend some more time researching this see what you can find and i would say look there's nothing out there like i know nothing's out there but they would still want you to keep trying and still spend time researching trying to find something that didn't exist now reason number two is quite frankly because i'm lazy and i don't want to keep track of my time let me tell you how annoying this is think about if you had to spend your entire day and keeping track of every little task that you were doing and how long it took you and even when i did have hourly billing i would have a timer on my computer so i could start stop at any time but think about that any time you got up to go pee you would stop the timer anytime you'd go eat you'd stop the timer and when you were switching between you know a phone call here researching this other matter here you would have to switch timers every single time now it got really annoying really quickly and when i knew that i was going out on my own i was like listen i am not keeping track of my time i want to be doing what i want which is not keeping track of my time so i'm kind of spoiled and i'm perfectly okay with that and i tell my clients look one of the reasons i don't bill hourly is because i'm lazy i don't want to keep track of my time i know you don't either because it's annoying as heck so reason number two why the hourly billing model sucks is because i don't want to keep track of my time number three i don't want to get paid for my time now some people may think they may have heard that and they're like what do you mean well i don't want to get paid for the amount of time that i spend working on something i want to get paid for my expertise and there's a difference there so typically with attorneys the more experience they have the more knowledgeable they are on the subject they can have a higher hourly rate but guess what i don't want to get paid for how much time i spend working on something i want to get paid for how much of an expert i am at something so our expertise over here at my firm is trademarks typically trademarks general counseling and because we're such experts we know exactly how long or how long something should take us and we bill ing to that and we have our flat fee set ing to how long it should be taking us not ing to how long it actually takes us so sometimes i get distracted and being the owner of the firm you know i'm getting pulled in a million different directions so if i'm keeping track of my time do you know how hard that is when i am working on maybe i'm working on emotion and i'm keeping track of my time but then you know i get a phone call here from my associate i get an email here from my paralegal or this client really needs to chat with me like there's a million different things that i have to handle and it's so hard to keep track of my time especially when you're the owner of the firm now also when i forget or if i want to spend some more time researching here or there i don't want it to be at the expense of my clients so i'm the expert here or i should be the expert so i shouldn't have to charge my clients extra to do more research and to double check on something that i'm pretty sure i know the answer to but if i want to double check i'm not going to charge my clients for that so that's why we flat fee pretty much everything is because we know how long something should take and if it takes us longer well that's probably our fault for not knowing the answer to begin with so those are my three reasons of why the hourly billing model sucks and i love the flat fee billing and so do my clients because number one they know exactly what they're paying they're not getting a surprise bill every month they know exactly what they're paying when they contact me so typically somebody will reach out like hey i'd love some trademark information and i send them the information they know exactly how much it's going to cost they know exactly how long it's going to take and they can be better prepared at that point to engage me and my firm in our services otherwise it'd be like okay well look we bill at 300 an hour it could take minimum it's going to take four hours or it could take 20 hours like that's a huge range right there and i don't want to put that on my clients number one because they're small businesses i know that small businesses don't have a plethora of funds typically you know they have a very set and strict budget and me with my firm we try to stick within their budget and make it work for them because i know how important legal protection is and the way i see it is i don't want the next google or apple not to get to google or apple phase because they did not have access to adequate and affordable legal services and when you're just starting out and you're trying to be that next google or apple you're typically bootstrapping you're on a budget and you want to know exactly how much you're paying because if you have an attorney tell you hey it could be four hours or it could be 20 hours and you're hoping okay hopefully it's six hours and that's what you really budget for but then you get that 20 hour bill like that's detrimental to some businesses now i don't want to belabor the point but just know that hourly billing sucks and our fee does pretty much all flat fees or subscription fees subscription with our all access model with the legalpreneur and that gives you all access to me and the firm everybody in the firm and yeah we keep it simple here so if you're looking for an attorney to help you with you know whether it's for your business or if it's for something else i would always ask for a flat fee or look for an attorney that will give you a flat fee because typically that saves you more money and it's definitely saves you from surprises now that's what i have to say about hourly billing and why it sucks so let me know if you have any questions reach out don't forget to text me i would love to hear from you in a text message so don't forget to shoot me a text with the word podcast to 832-225-3164 and i will see you on thursday hope you're staying safe and healthy if you found this information helpful i would be so grateful if you could share it with a fellow business owner and it doesn't cost anything to rate review or subscribe to the show your support helps me reach more listeners which allows me to support more business owners in their entrepreneurial journey i'll see you next episode [Music] you