What do our people say about Frank Fee after one year?
Welcome to this month's article of Let’s Be Frank, a monthly newsletter series hosted on LinkedIn and authored by our founder Digby. If you are interested in following along pop over to the Let’s Be Frank LinkedIn page here and hit the subscribe button to have these articles sent straight to your inbox.
Welcome to this month's article of Let’s Be Frank. You’re joining over 1440 others who are curious about challenging the status quo.
What have we covered in the first four articles?
We have discussed why and how to move away from billing by the hour and the challenges with this fundamental change. I have created an Infographic as a reference tool, which is a high level summary of what has been covered to this point. You will find this at the bottom of this article.
What are the staff at DL&Co. saying after one year?
In this article I am going to let others do the talking as I have shared a lot of my views already. Although moving away from hourly billing is good for all the stakeholders, a very important motivator for the change was that I wanted to create a better place for our staff to work; one in which there was not the push to just work more hours if you wanted to be financially successful. So I recently asked people in our office (after one year of Frank Fee) for the number one benefit for them in moving away from the traditional model of billing by the hour and this is what they had to say:
“The biggest benefit is that the client experience is better and their expectations are managed. This is really important for young lawyers and it’s very transparent.”
“I enjoy that there is a meeting of the minds upfront and there are less difficult conversations later.”
“Transitioning away from hourly billing has created excitement about doing something new and innovative, which has created a new firmwide energy.”
“The biggest thing is that once the fee is established at the beginning, there are no more back and forth conversations about fees. It is simple; the bill just goes out.”
“Frank Fee definitely takes your mind away from how many hours it takes to get the job done. While I do still think about the amount of time, it is not the driving force. I feel it certainly depressurizes the working environment.”
Until next time,
