For as long as memory serves, the business community has reeled in horror at the prospect of billable attorney hours. Why? Because of all the data analytics you have at your fingertips, the one piece of data that still escapes you is how your attorney(s) are going to staff and bill your matter. God forbid they put two (or more) partners (one equity and one non-equity/work), two (or more) associates (one senior and one junior), a paralegal, and all of their secretaries on this billable wagon. By the time you see the bill, you’re gonna wonder who you need to hire just to protect you from your own counsel!

Unfortunately, this is the revenue model of corporate law firms. They make money on the backs of their labor, meaning that the longer their labor force works, the more revenue they generate. The problem here is that such revenue ideology goes against the strategic planning and financial goals of the law firm’s clients, who expect to be operationally efficient on all fronts, by, amongst other things, having predictable vendor costs. This is the very conflict of traditional legal practice models — they place their clients into disadvantageous vendee positions while maximizing their own profitability.

Listen to Ben Shapiro speak about this conundrum from his own experience, which almost every attorney has at one point or another:

So, it was our mission here at H & H Law to end the nightmare. We needed to evolve the practice of law to make it more aligned with the needs of the business community. To us, that meant getting rid of retainer deposits and billable hours. How will the market accept our legal delivery model revolution? Well, I guess time will tell, but I am confident that consumers still set market expectations, and they will expect their legal services provider to do better.