#162: Legal Billing (An Alternative To The Billable Hour)

[00:01:00] Heather: Well, hello, hello everybody. Welcome to the Life & law Podcast. Today we are going to talk with Gwen Griggs, who is co-founder of Advos Legal and Advos Pro, who also has a background in big law and c suite roles. Our conversation is going to be all about legal billing because Gwen and her partner at Advos Legal built a new legal billing model that, instead of hours, measures what actually matters to the client, team and firm. She is a practicing lawyer who uses this model within her practice and the entire firm. And through Advos Pro’s training and systems, she and her partner help other firms break up with the outdated billable hour model and instead begin measuring their worth and expertise and results. Welcome, Gwen.

[00:01:43] Gwen: Thank you, Heather. Thank you for that great introduction. You have very succinctly summarized we’re up to. So I love it.

[00:01:51] Heather: Well, thank you. It is one of my strengths.

[00:01:56] Gwen: One of your superpowers. I can see that. Absolutely.

Gwen’s Background – And When She Started Questioning The Billable Hour As The Main Legal Billing Method

[00:01:59] Heather: So before we get into today’s main topic, I would love to just get a little bit more background about who you are and what you do so that people can get a better sense of who you are and maybe even tell us a little bit about why you chose to become a lawyer. Because I find that everybody has different stories around the why and where they ended up.

[00:02:18] Gwen: I think that’s such a fascinating question. So, no, my family has no lawyers in it.

We sort of – parents were first generation, college educated, thought college was really important. I wrote a paper on brown versus board of education when I was eleven years old.

[00:02:36] Heather: Oh, wow.

[00:02:37] Gwen: Yes, yes. And I think it was just like find a hero. And I went and researched and I found someone who came from humble beginnings and really, really had a huge impact on our world, on our country. And I thought, oh, like, I know that I have. I’m not coming from, you know, a lot of privilege or connections. Like, I knew I was going to have to make my own way in the world, and I wanted to make a big impact. And so that was my inspiration.

So I always knew I wanted to go to law school, graduate from law school, did well in law school, and ended up at big law.

[00:03:14] Heather: You and I so far had very similar trajectories because I decided I wanted to be a lawyer very young, too, and kind of always went through, ended up in a big firm.

[00:03:22] Gwen: Right. And. Right. You just, you like, when you are doing well and you get this opportunity, you think, of course I’m going to take this opportunity. Like, who wouldn’t you like, that’s, that’s all my colleagues, all my peers, that’s. They would, they would love this opportunity. So, like, great for me. 

And then I sort of woke up one day and was like, what on earth? Like, this is so far from that dream and vision that I had all those years ago. I. I appreciate every minute of the experience. I appreciated learning from really great lawyers. I also appreciated learning what I don’t love.

And I know we’re going to talk a lot about this, but I’ll say, like, really quickly into the practice of law…

I thought why are we measuring our time? 

Like, time is not what the client is asking us to do. 

They want us to solve a problem they have, and they want us to help them put a deal together or whatever. They have some reason that we’re there to help them. There is an outcome that they want, and it is completely disconnected with time. It just seemed so illogical to me. And I remember, too, thinking, like, if I am efficient, I am going to make less money if I solve their problem quickly. The client’s actually happy about that. Great for me. But I have tracked less hours, so the firm doesn’t value that as much. I’ve got to go find other things to do. And sustaining that level of creativity is really tough. Eight to 12 hours a day.

[00:04:56] Heather: Right.

[00:04:56] Gwen: So I just thought the business model was broken. I then had a chance to go become general counsel of a company. Loved that experience because it aligned so well. I was part of a management team. We looked at what is the outcome we’re trying to get? What can we do? How do we become strategic? How do we prioritize what we’re doing? Because we only have x number of resources, what are we putting them toward? The most important thing. That was very fulfilling. It made a ton of sense to me, and that’s actually how we ended up doing what we’re doing. 

My business partner sort of joke. It took me almost 20 years to put my foot in the ground and say, this is the way we’re gonna do it. And she was, I think, like a ten year lawyer when we met. So she. Big law, general counsel. But we both came together saying the model is broken. It is not measuring what clients want. That general counsel, that true, true general counsel model, if you can do it in a fractional way, is what clients really value.

What To Think About When Considering Non-Hourly Legal Billing Alternatives

[00:05:56] Heather: So I’m curious to know, when you first decided to do your own thing, right, and get away from the billable model, how did you. Did you know immediately we’re not doing billable hours? Did you. Okay, so you did?

[00:06:11] Gwen: Yeah. No, so I like, honestly, from within six months of practicing law and big law, I’m just like, my brain is thinking, this is not what the client like from a client experience. And I didn’t know much about anything, right. But I could understand that the client wants this done. And I was in a business model that doesn’t reward me getting it done, it rewards me spending a lot of time on it. That friction that happened really early on, then the experience of being general counsel, where I was freed from that, I’m behaving like a business person.

I had really the privilege of being able to. We brought in great strategic planning, support, and consultants. So you’re surrounded by people with mbas and how are you looking at it as a business? I’m still in the role of law for a lot of that. I did some other operational role, but a lot of it, I was the role of law. So I. 

It’s still the same deliverable, it’s still a legal deliverable, but it is not measured by how much time. No one’s, no one asked me how much time did I spend on it, right? 

Did I get it done? What is the risk of not getting it done but, like, things that matter to the client and the, and the business that they’re trying to build. And so we knew ours weren’t the measure. We didn’t know what was stumbled. And like avid reader of books. 

So because all our clients are entrepreneurs and business owners too, we get to like their brains and what do they think? And came across a book called how to do twice as much work in half the time. And it’s based on technology and software development, and so really adopted that scrum methodology within our firm, which, in a nutshell is we know where we want to go. We don’t know all the variables, but we’re going to do the bite size piece. We’re going to do the thing that we know we can do, the milestone. We’re going to get to that milestone, then we’re going to pick our head up, pay attention to the learning, and then take another step. We’re not going to try to plan everything out, which I think is where.

Tip: Don’t Plan Everything Ahead of Time (Keep It Flexible)

[00:08:24] Heather: A lot of lawyers get in trouble as we try to, like, plan the whole thing when we really have no clue, when we’re kind of starting to think of alternative arrangements and ways to do things differently.

[00:08:34] Gwen: 100%. And that’s, it’s funny because it’s really hard. There’s some complexity to it, so it’s hard to, like, in a bite size explanation, explain what we’re doing. But when I hear people say, oh, it’s a flat fee, I’m like, it’s really not a flat fee. Like, flat fees, people who have done them feel like they get burned because they try to scope out the entire project from day one, and it’s not a widget. There is complexity.

There are circumstances that are going to happen that we can’t predict when we start. So this methodology, really applying this agile concept to it, was unlocked it then.

We’ve learned a lot since then, but that was the, the basis and the core for how we, how we launched it.

[00:09:20] Heather: Sounds like you didn’t start where a lot of lawyers start, which is fixed fee. Or package based billing, where you thought of it as, okay, some of that conceptually can help us along the way, but that’s not, you knew that’s not really gonna work. We’ve got to figure out something different.

[00:09:38] Gwen: From the beginning, right? Yeah. We knew the complexity was, was a factor that you couldn’t ignore. You could not pretend like everything is the same and it’s always going to be the same.

How To Think About the Complexities (Regardless of Your Practice Area)

And sometimes I talk to lawyers and they’re like, oh, well, your practice, right. You just draft documents. I’m like, actually, like, we do a lot. We are M&A. You know, a big part of our practice is M&A transactions. There’s, I don’t know, the other lawyer on the other side. I don’t know when the deal starts. I don’t know how difficult they’re going to be. I don’t know what diligence is going to reveal. I don’t know the problems that might come up. 

But what we find is now we have a tremendous amount of data. We can look back and we can see. Here are the variables. Here are the reasons. One was on the high end, one was on the low end, and that learning is incredibly valuable to the client, too. If from day one I can say, I’ve looked at our data and here are the reasons that they’re on the low end, and here are the reasons that they’re on the high end. This is the typical range. 

What we find is, as you’re going through that journey with the client, if something comes up, they were there, they saw how difficult the other lawyer was or how unreasonable it was, or that they have an ERISA claim that they didn’t know, or ERisa potential ERIsA problem that they didn’t know about when they started this. So they understand that it became more complex than they thought it was going to be on day one. And nobody has any issue with it’s going to cost more if it’s more complex.

[00:11:05] Heather: Right.

Tip: Be Open About, & Give the Client Control Over, Risk

[00:11:06] Gwen: And they get to make some decisions of like, are you willing to take this risk or do you want us to do this work? Whitney has, like, thought about this in a way of the difference between pricing versus billing.

[00:11:18] Heather: Right.

[00:11:18] Gwen: The billing is I’m going to do the work, then I’m going to bill you for the work I did. Pricing is we’re going to have that conversation before we do the work so that you are in control of what we’re doing, what you want to diye.

[00:11:30] Heather: Right.

[00:11:31] Gwen: What risk you’re willing to take because it’s an investment and they get to make that investment.

Is This Legal Billing Method Just Another Flat Fee or Subscription Model?

[00:11:38] Heather: So it’s more, it sounds like this model. It does not. Something I hear a lot is, well, our clients need, like people talk about flat fee and subscription based billing and things of that nature so that the clients know exactly what they’re going to pay every month ahead of time in a budget. That’s not really what this is. Right. And I will say that kind of billing, in my experience, does not work well.

Assigning – and Paying for – Points

[00:12:02] Gwen: I will say it kind of. It kind of is, but let me. How we do it. So what we’ll do is like, in two different camps. So, so some of our clients are just, we’ve represented them for years and years and years and they’re, and they have a monthly fee that they’re paying.

And then we have looked at the work and associated the work with points. So the client is paying for points. So the deliverable when I deliver agreement to you.

[00:12:32] Heather: Right.

[00:12:33] Gwen: Or I deliver an analysis to you. Like, there’s a point value attached to each of the deliverables. And when you start, you are going to pick a number. Like, you know, I think I want three points this quarter. We’re going to do one, basically, one project. A quarter.

[00:12:47] Heather: Right.

[00:12:49] Gwen: So they are flat fee. Right. They’re paying just the same amount every day, every month. And we have it, frankly, automated billing, too, so that it makes the billing process really, really easy. And what we are doing is tracking the points and letting them know you are on track, off track, which is really, if you think about someone who sits in the role of general counsel, it’s the same thing they’re doing. They’re saying, you’ve given us this slate of work. I’m getting paid a salary, right. It’s a flat fee.

[00:13:14] Heather: Right.

[00:13:15] Gwen: I’m getting paid the same amount every month. And it is. There’s a slate of work. And if I think you need more, I’m going to come to the management team and say, we either need to hire more people, we need to outsource this. It’s going to be outside of the budget.

But that communication about pricing before the work is done lets the client say, actually, okay, we’re going to push that project to next quarter because I don’t want my budget to go up.

What Makes This Legal Billing Method Different (Than the Flat Fee & Subscription-Based Billing Most Lawyers Lose Money On)

[00:13:46] Heather: Or, okay, we’ll find more money. You need to do it. But what I say, I still think this is very different than what most lawyers think. 100% subscription or flat pay. Because what I find and why it does not work is they go in thinking, this is it. This is, you know, and they’re too afraid to go back and talk to their clients.

Partnership, Flexibility & Conversations

What I hear here is, you do, and by the way, this is done in numerous areas. Non legal, but used to base by the hour, too. Consulting.

Like, they used to do this, and now they look at, okay, here’s what we’re seeing. Here’s what you’re asking. Here’s what we think.

You agree, but you have to partner with them and continue conversations over time to ensure you’re on track. And if some, they’re starting to send you work, that’s, let’s say you assign three points, and this is like, no, this is five points.

You pick up the phone and have a conversation.

[00:14:42] Gwen: Right.

Reassessment

[00:14:43] Heather: And then they get to make a decision based on that conversation.

So it doesn’t mean you stay stuck at what you agreed to no matter what. Right. Because what I see people doing, and they get in so much trouble, I think doing this is they’re a afraid to. So they give a little wiggle room over and over again.

And then what happens though is then the client, they’ve agreed to like a subscription based type of a thing, but they have two or three months where they’re not sending you as much work and they don’t want to pay that full amount. But yet you’ve already. But you didn’t say anything before because you thought, well, I’ll make up for it later. But then you don’t. 

Because then you don’t know how to handle that. And then they pay less. And so you actually lose money on that. Because you gave them way more than what they paid for. 

How to Think About Time

And it doesn’t matter. And we’re not even necessarily talking time. We’re talking to, we all think have this sense, right expertise, the value of what you’re providing. And some of that does relate to time, let’s be honest. Like if something takes 5 hours versus 25 hours, you have to take into account the massive difference to some extent because there is only so much time in the day, week, month. Right. So I don’t think we’re saying you don’t ever look at time because there is only so much time in the day and there is only so much work one human or one teen can do. But at the same time it not indicative of the type of work and the value you’re giving to only look at time. Right. So for, and it’s interesting to me, I didn’t do it this way as a practicing lawyer, but I did often.

I was required by a lot of my clients to give upfront estimations. Here’s where I think the range would be. Kind of like what you’re talking about.

[00:16:31] Gwen: Yeah.

[00:16:32] Heather: And if something happened, like opposing counsel was a pain in the butt and they constantly wanted new drafts, we would have a conversation about this is going to be more expensive. 

How This Legal Billing Method Assists With Client Management, Builds Trust & Increases Business

And here’s what I’m thinking. If something came up that was new, that was going to massively change everything and require a lot more due diligence, we would have a conversation.

It’s not that far out of the realm of what you really should be doing with clients anyway, right.

Building Better Relationships Through Open Communication

[00:16:58] Gwen: You want great relationships, right?

[00:17:01] Heather: Yes. And I’d love to get more into, though, how this structure really helps set you up for more success in the long run and make. And my guess also is you have to train your clients on it to some extent, correct?

[00:17:17] Gwen: Oh, yes. We have a course and the first one is pricing, which is a lot of what we’re talking about here. But the second module in the course is pitching because you have to educate your client in a very, very, very different way of practicing. And the way we have found the most success is sort of get your foot in the door, right? Like get them, get them to commit to a month or an assessment or something at the lowest level where you’re just going to come in and give them some recommendations and they’re going to see, you’re probably going to, if you do it well, you’re probably going to see a lot of things they didn’t know they needed to focus on.

[00:17:55] Heather: Right.

Client-Focused Pricing

[00:17:55] Gwen: Because they come to you with a problem. And if you are saying, we’re going to make sure you’re going to get to the goal you want, you’re thinking, this is the problem. But I actually am more concerned about this.

That doesn’t take a tremendous amount of time. That is invaluable to the client. That is getting them closer to what their real goal is versus just solving the problem that’s right in front of you, I think vending machines. Your client comes to you and says, do this, I’ll do that. Well, or your client comes to you and says, you want this, and you say, where are you going?

Where are you taking this? What’s your timeframe? Then let’s look holistically about what are the obstacles for you to get there and make sure that we’re spending that legal budget on the most important thing. That is where so much value is added.

[00:18:48] Heather: Right.

[00:18:48] Gwen: And that’s where you become, you know, the clients become clients for life. You save them from things that they didn’t even know were a problem.

[00:18:56] Heather: What you’re really talking about is you’re more than just a lawyer. You’re a business partner and legal advisor both, and you’re partnering with your client. So this approach really opens up that door to bringing more of that in, to changing the whole relationship, to deepen that relationship over time. 

Which, by the way, although on a project by project basis, you’re going to be more efficient, maybe not charging as much as you would on a billable hour sometimes you’re going to get paid more because you’re going to be brought more in depth and you’re going to, the value you bring to the table in that manner is actually seen. And even if you’re not paid more on one particular project, you’re going to expand the relationship and the work you do with that client over time because of that relationship. That’s what I heard and why lawyers would really want to, if not this particular model. Think about how to adopt something like this, because I think that’s a game changer for business. Growth is great to go get new clients, but it’s even better if you can expand what you already have. And this is a way to expand what you already have with people and gain a lot more trust and satisfaction.

Improving the Client Experience

[00:20:08] Gwen: Heather, you hit the nail on the head. So what we did really was to imagine the customer experience, our clients experience of engaging with us from when they first heard what we were doing to they were onboarded and work was delivered to how they’re invoiced and how they pay and, like, where are all the friction points? Because I did practice law in the traditional model, and I would send them a bill afterwards.

[00:20:36] Heather: Right.

[00:20:37] Gwen: And then I would have this really awkward conversation because the bill wasn’t what they expected it was going to be.

And now you’re defending. Right. And even in the role of general counsel, like, I’ll tell you, we hired outside counsel on the regular.

[00:20:52] Heather: Right.

[00:20:52] Gwen: And I would get this excruciatingly detailed, seven page, line by line invoice. But what I would do is look at the matter on the front page. What is the matter? Description. I’d flip to the back and look at the number on the bottom and go, was that what I expected to pay? And if it wasn’t what I expected to pay, then I’m going to go back through those line by lines. You’re giving them, you’re giving your client the tool to argue with you about the bill, right?

Saving Administrative Time (Freeing Up More Time For Work)

[00:21:20] Heather: Yeah, you are. And I learned, I think I’ve written about this on LinkedIn before. Early in my legal career, the first couple of years, there was this partner I worked for who had this very difficult client, like super difficult client. And they were super high. Like you had to hand hold them, you had to walk them through everything, but they never wanted to pay for that. And they would argue their bills constantly. And it got to the point where she was tired of dealing with it. So she, like, put it on me.

I would have to go through every bill we sent and line by line, read through and change the way people talked about things to not, it was still very honest, but it was done in a way where it would at least, because we got to learn what was and was not acceptable to pay for. And so we had to describe it in a way that they would pay for it, the work that you did for them. And it always had to be like a value based. Where did that lead? What was, how did that. Right. So I spent, but you were doing it. 

It was ridiculous amount of time on those bills every month. I learned a lot about how to Bill and how not to Bill. I learned a lot about partnering with clients. One thing I would say is for anybody who says this is just too, it’s easier to just log my hours and bill the time and send it out and deal with it at her. And if I have to give a discount, I have to give a discount. I know there’s a lot of lawyers thinking that. 

Yeah, I’m sorry, but if you want to have really great clients who are loyal to you, who stick with you and you want to make client development easy, you need a billing system regardless of whether you bill hourly or not, you should be talking to your client anyway. Every time something happens like this is going to be more than you think. Like you should have an upfront conversation about how much it should be anyway. You should be updating them consistently. You should be talking to them about, it’s going to be a little outside the realm because of this. Those conversations should be going on regardless. So I don’t think this adds anything to the mix in that realm.

No Write-Off’s Or Arguments

[00:23:17] Gwen: Well, and you touched on one of the big reasons we did it.

[00:23:22] Heather: Right.

[00:23:22] Gwen: When I thought of how much time is spent tracking time, right. Polishing the time entries, polishing the bills, sending, then having that’s not billable time. None of that’s billable now I’m having a conversation with them after the fact about the bill. Maybe I’m reducing the bill. Like there’s no logic in that. Right. The client has a problem they want to solve. If you tell them it’s x or here’s the range.

[00:23:50] Heather: Right.

[00:23:50] Gwen: And then you keep them informed along the way, then they’re not surprised.

We have no write offs. We have no discounts.

[00:24:00] Heather: Right.

[00:24:00] Gwen: We’ve never had anybody argue about our invoice. So we don’t spend any time doing that. We don’t spend any time, time tracking. And again, when you think about like what’s the magic of lawyering, right. What, what, what skill do we have? Like there’s a genius we have, it is not writing down telephone call with right, so and so about blah, blah.

[00:24:23] Heather: Blah, like it’s advocating, it’s negotiating, it’s like partnering, solving problems, all of which go naturally with keeping your client informed around this stuff anyway. So you’re talking to them about other things. You’re going to be mentioning these things as you go. It doesn’t, it should, it doesn’t really add extra time and it takes away time is what I’m hearing.

Tracking Productivity & Dealing With Rush Projects Using This Legal Billing Method

[00:24:47] Gwen: It is definitely. Well, and I’ll say, and we were really intentional about this when we said we are not going to keep, we’re not going to track time that way. We keep general, your point earlier, like you want. I want to know if my paralegal has spent 10 hours on something that I thought should have been two or three. Like to me, that is data that lets me say, does she need more training? Does she not understand?

Do we need a different system? Is the system that the process we have for this really cumbersome? Where’s the opportunity to become more efficient? So there’s a value in margin of error, keeping some sense of your time.

[00:25:26] Heather: Right.

[00:25:26] Gwen: And time is a factor, but we factor complexity and urgency as well. If you want it fast, it’s going to be more points for that.

Again, with the training of our clients.

[00:25:40] Gwen: By now they’re going to tell us before they do it. They’re going to tell us way before they’re going to do it because they’re not afraid. Clients are smart, too. I’ve absolutely had conversation with clients where they’re like, no, I know if I give you two weeks to do it, you’re going to work on it for two weeks and it’s going to take, you’re going to spend a little bit of time every day and you’re the kind of switching costs, I’m paying for all the switching costs as you do it one day and you do a little bit the other day. And if I tell you on Thursday I need it tomorrow, you’re going to get it done in a really short amount of time.

[00:26:08] Heather: Right.

[00:26:09] Gwen: Well, that’s a terrible experience as the attorney, too. Right. You’re like, now I’m scrambling and I get paid no more money because I’ve told them it’s an hourly rate. And if I spend 4 hours today, I’m getting no more money. But that’s not how it works. I’m like, if you want it, you can have it and you will pay. The next.

[00:26:27] Heather: You will pay, but you’ll pay for that. Yeah. Because you have to rejuggle everything and it takes or turn work away.

[00:26:37] Gwen: Yeah. And sometimes you have to turn work. Like if I’m taking this on an urgent basis that I didn’t plan, I now can’t take the new work that came in.

So I’m literally turning work away. And you should have to compensate for that.

And clients.

[00:26:51] Heather: Right.

[00:26:52] Gwen: UPs, FedEx, you want it overnight, you pay more like every other world, that’s a factor.

[00:26:59] Heather: Okay, so there’s two things that are coming that I want to ask about. One is this idea of, you still need to track some time. Like when you’re managing people, when you’re training people, associates, paralegals, that.

How are they still needing to track generally their time so that you, the partner, or the person above can see their progression. How do you deal with that?

[00:27:22] Gwen: Yeah, so honestly, we’re big believers. And you measure what matters.

You get what you measure. And because our clients are paying for points, right. They’re paying for the deliverable. Our system is tracking us finishing the points. And there’s different roles on a task.

So the paralegal might do the first draft.

And the partner may AQ it. Well, now we’re going to allocate the point, right to each of the people who’ve been part of that project. So actually, from a performance management standpoint, we track delivered points. And you’re, you know, and the system is, is automated, it’s not a manual system, but I can tell. Are you on track for delivering, getting things done, getting things across the finished.

[00:28:08] Heather: Which you’re not having to track hour by hour, but you know when it starts and you know when it’s delivered. And if it’s. If they’re supposed to deliver in three days, but it takes them four or it takes them the full three days, and you thought, you know, you ask the questions and find out what’s going on. So that’s how you track time.

[00:28:24] Gwen: Yeah, in our system, too, like the task, we can track time on a task. So, like rough justice. But I’m not going back and performance managing on the time.

I’m not going. I’m saying if we were off, right, I told the client it was going to be a one point project because I thought it was going to be four or 5 hours. And the paralegal took more than that. The client’s still going to pay what I told them, the one point.

But I’m going to go back and look in our system to see where we could have been more efficient.

The result of doing that over time is the client is still paying us the half a point. The one point. We’ve become incredibly efficient. Incredibly efficient. Like the paralegal is very, very good. She’s got system. We rely on AI and technology. She delivers something to me that’s pretty much client ready. I spend ten or 15 minutes qa ing it to make sure it’s right, and we still get paid and the client is fine because the client knew turning that services agreement around was going to be whatever it was going to be.

[00:29:30] Heather: Right, right.

[00:29:31] Gwen: So we get an opportunity to become even more profitable than we would have if we build by the hour, because now we’re not spending more time on it, but it’s because of the systems we’ve built.

Key to Success? Systems

[00:29:41] Heather: Right. Which I wanted to. You just pointed that out. I wanted to point that out. This is high. Like this doesn’t work without systems and some level of technology probably too, so that you can track appropriately.

Yeah. I will say some of the Advos pro clients that don’t have the technology that’s built in, we used a no code, low code software when we first started. So we have built it in. And some of the advocacy pro clients have adopted that same software, third party software. It’s not ours. Some of our clients that just track it in Excel, some of the law firm clients.

[00:30:17] Heather: So it’s not like it doesn’t have to be hugely high level, but you do have to have a system that you’ve put together. And for those of you who are like, I’m not sure what you mean by system. I have a whole podcast around that. There’s all kinds of things you can systematize. I’ll put it a link to that one in the show notes that you can go back and listen to it. I have a framework that you can download even that explains how to get started. And systemization, I think systemization is something that lawyers do not do enough of.

That can really save time. And here’s the other thing I found. I, a lot of lawyers are really bad at delegating as much as they could. We don’t delegate enough. We try to take control. Having good systems in place allows you to delegate a lot more and still feel like you’re in control.

And it allows others more autonomy, and it allows others to learn more and more quickly so that they can serve you better and the clients better.

[00:31:09] Gwen: So, yes, it’s almost like you’re in our world, because that’s what I would say is our paralegals get to learn so much faster, then they’re growing. It’s interesting to them. They’re looking for opportunities to become more efficient. They’re saying, you know what, this step in the process. And they’re the ones closer to it.

[00:31:29] Heather: Right.

[00:31:30] Gwen: So they can say, this step in the process, or maybe we decide actually we’re not going to do that part of the product. We’re going to say, client, this is yours. To do simple example, but EIN’s, like, I’ve got to get your Social Security number. Well, we’re not really designed to manage that kind of data, but if we do everything about a formation and you or your CPA, we tell the client to go do the ein filing because it’s not high value to the client, but there’s risk associated with it. That’s outside what we feel good about charging for it.

So you just, you get to make much more informed decisions of how do we do the most profitable work, the most valuable work for our clients.

[00:32:18] Heather: And everything about systems that I think people don’t always understand is what systemization does is creates, creates structure everywhere you can have it on things that aren’t as creative. Right. So that it frees up more time for the more fun, creative work we lawyers and even the paralegals like to do. It’s so important to adopt systems early on and get them everywhere you possibly can.

[00:32:43] Gwen: Yeah. Heather, we’re kindred spirits.

And that’s part of why we brought, like, we came from a business world where the business was like, where’s the inefficiency? Where’s the friction with the client? How do we do this better every single time? We do it in an exponentially better way. Not just like, I got this great clause, I’m going to put it in a clause library. And next time we know that the clause is there, like, no, where’s a playbook? Where’s the automation? Where’s the link to the checklist so that nobody is going and looking for data that they can’t remember where it is.

It’s all built into our system. And that, to me, that’s part of the magic. And the client is fine paying the thing they thought they were going to pay, we now can become wildly more efficient.

And we’re spending our time doing, just as you were saying, the creative stuff. And our team is getting to do more creative and interesting work and more valuable work. So it’s sort of this upward virtuous cycle.

[00:33:49] Heather: Right?

[00:33:49] Gwen: Like keeps getting better and better, you know?

Will This Legal Billing Method Work for Everyone (Even Litigators)? The Truth.

[00:33:53] Heather: So I have a question. We kind of touched on this earlier, but I want to go a little more into it.

There’s going to be litigators out there listening to this, going that this is all fine and good for you, front end corporate finance, whatever, lawyers, but not for litigation. This won’t work. What do you say to that?

[00:34:11] Gwen: Yeah, we do hear that. And I do think if you’re a litigator who, and you expect that some other party is going to pay your fee at some point. You will want to track your time if you really get to the place where. Because the courts and the judges, they’re not familiar with this, but it actually just like an m and a transaction.

Client. You know, there’s a. Honestly, almost. Maybe even. Even as easy.

Because, you know, there’s a complaint and there’s an answer or there’s a response and there’s discovery. And what you can do is look at your average. Like, depositions are small, medium, large. Right. Complexity. They’re one, two or three points. Every deposition we do is going to be one, two, or three points client.

And then the client can say, oh, it’s going to cost. That I don’t want to do. I only want to do these three depositions.

I don’t want to do the seven depositions.

[00:35:07] Heather: Right.

[00:35:07] Gwen: And so each mediation is going to be a three point project, like, or prep for the mediation. Like, there’s very, very defined milestones in a litigation process. And if you go back in the way we do it when we’re teaching other people is you go back historically, you pick something that’s small. Maybe there’s. Maybe there’s a type of litigation you do. That’s the smallest kind of thing you would do.

Well, and then go back historically, look at your data or just from your gut.

Like if you’ve been doing it, you actually have probably a pretty good understanding. Your example of you’re getting asked to do estimates. Where’s that coming from? It’s coming from the vast amount of experience you have had doing things similar.

So you pick a number. It doesn’t have to be perfect.

You pick a number. You pick an estimate. You give them the number of points, and then you like. It’s that constant iteration. Right. Continuous improvement.

[00:36:01] Heather: You adjust as you go.

[00:36:03] Gwen: Exactly.

[00:36:04] Heather: Do you have litigators using your system within your.

[00:36:09] Gwen: We do. Yeah. We do. Yeah.

[00:36:11] Heather: So it can work.

[00:36:12] Gwen: Obviously it can work. Yep. And I’m not a litigator, so it is. And the reason we like the way we’re doing it is it’s a framework, and then the client is going to, or the law firm owner is going to go figure out how does it work in their world, in their practice, family law, which is litigation, it works there.

And I think especially with someone who is less sophisticated about buying legal services, I think that’s where even more important, because people who are used to buying it have some sense of what things should cost. If you are going through a family law matter. You probably don’t have any idea, have.

[00:36:53] Heather: No clue what it should cost.

[00:36:55] Gwen: And so explaining to them on the front end here are the steps and also building in the, if things go awry here, here are the levers that are going to, or decisions you make about how we’re working together so that client, you stay in control of what you’re spending.

Final Tips For Implementing This (or A Similar) Legal Billing Method

[00:37:13] Heather: So let’s say somebody’s like, this is interesting.

I’m in on trying something new. I’m going to try something like this.

What drawbacks? Roadblocks, bumps in the road? Would you warn about, like people be aware of as they get started on this or something like this?

Tip 1: Start Small

[00:37:35] Gwen: Yeah, I think start really small.

I think that’s, I don’t try to, Whitney will say to me sometimes we’re not trying to boil the ocean, right. We’re not going to solve everything. And lawyers sometimes are like, I’m ready for the battle, like I’m going to overhaul everything. We’re going to change everything. Don’t, don’t do that.

Like be realistic about, you know, you’re going to have to explain to your client, it’s different. Right. But if you, if you invest that time in the small example, then you’re going to get some muscle memory. 

Tip 2: Start With Non-Legal Work

The other thing that we’ve seen work really well is sometimes depending on the size of the firm doing it, not for the legal work.

And what I mean by that is there’s an onboarding process, there’s a marketing process. Right. There’s a, there’s, call it 50% of the work that is done inside a firm is not delivering a deliverable to a client.

It’s running the finances, marketing, sales.

But if it’s back to your point about systems.

Tip 3: Put Systems In Place First

[00:38:35] Gwen: Like get your team really comfortable with, where’s the opportunity to automate, where’s the opportunity to have a system? If they create the systems in a very low risk area because it’s not client facing, then your team’s going to get much more comfortable with one on ones or half a point. I’m just making something up. If the metric that you’re measuring in marketing and business development is having one on ones, then we’re going to start tracking the one on ones and we’re going to create a system of how do we make this as efficient as possible in that process or onboarding a client. And so the team might get a point.

And then they have a. I expect you to be able to do that in two days. Do all the pieces that are associated with that. So whatever it is, measure it and get your team experience with that. Then take it to the client facing side.

[00:39:28] Heather: That makes sense because that kind of, from a coaching perspective, it changes the mentality around how they think about these things and the day to day things that they do. So if you start with that stuff, the other thing I would say that probably is genius about that is this type of a system require or framework requires a lot of systems. So you need to get comfortable with systemization.

[00:39:53] Gwen: And I would probably more than start.

[00:39:57] Heather: With all of the easier things behind the scenes that are not client facing. Get comfortable with it and then start creating systems within the client facing. And once you do that, you’re probably ready to start, like billing differently, too, right?

[00:40:10] Gwen: Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s definitely, it’s a mindset shift.

And then once you’ve had you, you start to see the behavior change. Right. If, if I am measuring, you got them onboarded in two days and you get full credit for that. Now you’re going to get those behaviors because people know it’s not just about I did it at some point.

I have a metric that matters to the firm, and everybody wants to get the a right. Everybody. You tell me what the number is. We want to get it right. But if ours are the measure, like, you know, I showed up every day and I put in my hours, right?

[00:40:50] Heather: Like, it’s soul sucking. It actually takes some of that.

Like, I don’t know if most lawyers think of it this way. I certainly didn’t until I came out and started looking back and somebody called me a creative in my new business because I do a lot of writing right online. And I’m like, I’m not creative. I’m a lawyer. But then I start thinking about it like, no lawyers are creative thinkers. But the problem solving that we do requires that, and that’s usually the part we love the most.

So take away the human nature filling by the hour. You’re taking some of that away and you’re not able to really focus on the things that matter and that are important to you and that make practicing law make lawyering so fun.

[00:41:35] Gwen: Yeah, 100%. 100%. And that’s actually like our, our perspective is be sure you’re in the right practice. Like, if you want a practice love, right, like that. You enjoy getting up and going to work every day, you enjoy representing your clients, you enjoy the actual work you’re doing. You have to start by making sure you’re in the right practice area.

And I and my story about that. I actually started off as a litigator because, you know, I only thought that was, that was, I thought that was the only way you could lawyer because I had no frame of reference. And in contracts class freshman year, I thought that was the worst, like, drudgery. Who would ever do this? This is terrible. I couldn’t imagine doing this all day long. Then I get into the practice, I tried a jury trial, which was like the pinnacle of my life, right? And we won. We got a zero. And I, as soon as it was done, I was like, I never want to do that again as long as I live. Because for me, it was like gambling, right? It was like, I could do all the right things and we could lose. I could do all the wrong things. We could win. I was like, I can’t. I am not wired that way at all.

I like control. I like to know that my activities are going to get a certain result. And luckily, in big law, I was in a big enough firm where I could say, hey, m and a department, will you have me?

[00:43:01] Heather: So, yeah, definitely. You need to enjoy your practice.

This is not going to save you from not being happy with the law that you’re doing or even being a lawyer. Right.

[00:43:12] Gwen: And I being able to say, yeah, yeah. Like, actually, that, that difficult client, we’re not going to be a good fit. I don’t have to say yes to you.

[00:43:22] Heather: And then more lawyers need to learn. And that’s something I harp on my clients, like, you guys, like, you get to choose a who your clients are, what law you’re practicing, where you practice it, whether it’s in a big firm, mid firm, whether you’re solo, you put your own firm together. Like, there’s lots of ways to do this. There is no wrong way.

[00:43:43] Gwen: Right.

[00:43:45] Heather: In the sense of you get to do it your own way. The wrong way is being somewhere you hate, like do it your way, build on your strengths, leverage those, build a values based practice that is with clients you actually click with and enjoy working for, and you’re going to be way more happy.

[00:44:04] Gwen: Yes. That is. Yeah. For us, we talk about practice clients and then the model, right. The pricing model is an area where you can create a lot of friction because you are not in alignment, or you can take all that friction away and say, you’re going to pay me this. I’m going to feel very good about getting paid this. If you want it fast, I’m going to charge you more so that I’m okay with that, too. And then we’ve created like really robust systems of how we do our deep dive with the client initially, and we set up the data room for them from day one, and then we’re doing regular meetings. You talked about communicating with them earlier on, and we have, like, depending on what level membership you are, we’re meeting every other week or once a month. And then when we do it and our clients tell us this, it’s the funniest thing. I never thought, I would love to meet with my lawyer, but, you know, and I go tell, I’m the CEO, I go tell my person, like, I’m going to meet my lawyer. And they’re like, oh, I’m so sorry. And they’re like, no, I love meeting with my lawyer.

[00:45:06] Heather: Right.

[00:45:06] Gwen: Because in our system, we have this very, very efficient. Like, we’re going to go through every single project. I’m waiting for you to deliver this to me.

We need to deliver this to you. We expect to do it in two weeks. Right. It’s very collaborative. It’s like a person on a management team. Right.

[00:45:26] Heather: It’s a collaborative partnership as opposed to this constant push pull that we see in a lot of practices right now.

[00:45:33] Gwen: Yeah. And that’s where you say, finish this one thought. That’s where we say to them, and you’re on track or off track with the points.

Here’s the work we’ve completed.

Which is what the client wants to see. Here are the projects. Oh, yeah, I forgot I asked you to do that. But it’s not buried in time. We delivered these projects. Here are the ones that are active and the points associated with them. So here’s what we expect to happen for the rest of the quarter. On track. Off track. But here’s a little magic secret that people like. Some of the objections we get, the objections are, well, I’m spending all this time that I’m not getting paid for because that’s not deliverable.

I’m like, that time is where the client is going to tell you the other work they have to do. Right. Because you have taken the barrier of, I’m going to talk fast and not tell you anything.

When hours are what I’m paying for, you’ve taken that away. So in that meeting, you said it earlier, like, mind the clients who already love you. Right now, I’m going to be able to understand the business. I’m going to say, hey, I don’t think we’ve taken a look at your standard services agreement.

And they’re not going to feel like they’re being sold to because they know you’re a partner in the journey with them.

[00:46:46] Heather: It expands the relationship, the trust, and then the work that you get over time.

[00:46:51] Gwen: Yes.

Yeah. Perfect. Our clients, once they’re on, they don’t. The reason they leave is because they’ve sold their business. Like we help them through the sale. Although the other thing that happens is a lot of those go on to do another business, right? Or so it might be a little lull, right, where they’re not a client, but they come back and they love the experience. It’s a completely different experience they’ve never had before.

Where To Get More Information

[00:47:17] Heather: Well, that is a great place to end. Anybody who is hearing this and going, okay, I want to learn more about this methodology she’s talking about. Where can they go to learn more?

[00:47:28] Gwen: Yeah, our website is Advospro, a dash o dash p dash r dash o.com. and that has kind of high level all the different ways to learn more about this. There’s a lot of, in the resource section, there’s a lot of free like we are big believers that the profession needs to change, especially with AI happening, right? You’ve got to change the pricing model and there is a way to do it that is great for everybody.

So like it.

There’s a lot of resources out there, but certainly also reach out to me on LinkedIn. Happy to set up a call and share our experiences, see if it could fit for somebody.

[00:48:13] Heather: And I have links to everything. I will put links in the show notes so that people can find you and find adverse pro and reach out as they need to.