Death of the Hourly Rate and The Critical Need for Matter Planning

Brought to you by the CLOC Education Advisory Council

The economics of legal practice and business operations are quickly changing—is your law department prepared? It increasingly seems like today’s law firm billing rate hikes have no basis in reality. As an example of where things are headed, the 2024 ACC CLO Survey indicates that 58% were impacted by law firm rate hikes (23% saying these increases have been difficult to manage), while 42% said they received a cost-cutting mandate from their organization. At the same time, corporate clients are demanding more transparent and predictable billing processes based on alternative fees.  

The CLOC LPM Committee has spent the last year putting significant thought into how to change this equation, identifying ways to transition away from “back end” invoice review and towards “front end” matter planning. To succeed, legal operations professionals must design and implement better matter scoping and pricing/budgeting processes and policies and implement requirements for outside counsel to proactively manage to their estimates.  

Applying knowledge gained from industry experts, this webinar presentation will show you how to effectively plan and price, allowing you to increase resource productivity while reducing legal spend. It’s finally time to shift the hourly rate paradigm and institute process improvements in support of better matter oversight and “win-win” billing relationships. Come learn how. 

Learning Objectives:  

1. Build an effective matter/project plan, request for matter proposal and updated billing guidelines.  

2. Learn budgeting concepts & templates designed to create “win-win” billing relationships.  

3. Identify ways to obtain buy-in from lawyers so as to institute new planning and pricing paradigms.