Osler's Razor

In the past few days I received two comments on law firm work-- the first in the form of a very good point made by Ms. Boatman of the PC class, the second from a Baylor graduate in the form of a well-farked Dilbert cartoon. I think I agree much more with the former than the latter (after all, I was an associate at a big firm, and generally it was a pretty good job). I think there are problems with the billable hour, but I'm not sure there is a good alternative, either. The alternative Ms. Boatman refers to is Scott Turow's suggestion that flat-fee billing be considered.

This was Ms. Boatman's comment:

Lawyers in big firms are definitely suffering, but I'm not sure if the solution is as simple as getting rid of the billable hour. My thoughts on it are that the attitude of the big firm is already set. Just because they start billing by the job does not mean that senior partners will start going home and sending their associates home at 5:00. The demands will probably remain the same. I think that will just put the pressure on in a different way, by demanding that each associate complete more projects. I also think that, just as the billable hour may reward inefficiency, the transactional billing approach may reward the fastest worker, even if some quality will suffer. That is just as bad for the client, or maybe even worse. The billable hour encourages attorneys to pursue every option and research every question, whereas a flat fee does not reward that type of thoroughness. In my opinion, the proposed system has just as many problems; they just are not the same problems.

It's an excellent point-- and may explain why so few firms have moved away from hourly billing.