ANALYSIS: Law Firms Respond to Demand for Alt. Fee Models

At a recent CLOC (Corporate Legal Operations Consortium) event in Las Vegas, a legal billing technology company used the Quentin Tarantino movie “Kill Bill” as its booth theme. Uma Thurman’s appearance on marketing materials at any legal industry conference sends the clear, now-prevalent message: Kill the billable hour.

Alternative fee arrangements—whereby law firms charge their clients on something other than a straight hourly billing basis—are seen as the next frontier in law firm profitability. With increasing demands from in-house legal departments to provide cost certainty and the time needed for certain legal tasks sheared by technology, AFAs would seem to ...