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AFA 3.0 – the Evolution to Effective Fee Agreements: Part 1 (The Problem)
The recent “9th Annual Litigation Trends Survey” by Fulbright & Jaworski revealed, somewhat surprisingly, that the use of AFAs may be trending down. Corporate Counsel summarized the finding of the...
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AFA 3.0 – the Evolution to Effective Fee Agreements: Part 2 (What Doesn’t Work)
Before I can discuss where AFAs need to go (v. 3.0), it makes sense to look at the first, largely unsuccessful attempts (v. 1.0), taken by clients to control their outside legal spend. In an earlier...
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AFA 3.0 – the Evolution to Effective Fee Agreements: Part 3 (It’s Already Built)
In Part 2, I briefly looked at some “traditional”AFA models and their rather ho-hum results – no wonder GCs and clients aren’t singing their praises. So why the lukewarm reception (at best) to these...
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The Big Lie: There Are Only a Few “Bad Apples” Committing Billing Abuse
Spring is in the air, so it must be time for the New York Times to run out another front-page story on BigLaw billing abuse. Given the relatively “small potatoes” of the dispute at issue - in this...
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DLA Pipergate: A Story of Greed, Arrogance & Client Naiveté
Someone’s not telling the truth. And I don’t mean like-kinda-not-telling-the-truth, but really-not-telling-the-truth. It’s either me, or the boys over at DLA Piper. Here’s my take, from my last post:...
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Billing Abuse Scoreboard — Clients 1 BigLaw 0 (DLA Piper Folds ‘Em)
As Kenny Rogers croons in “The Gambler“: You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, Know when to walk away and know when to run. It warmed the cockles of my heart to hear that DLA Piper...
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DLA Piper Takes to the High Seas to Celebrate
Who says cheaters never prosper? Shortly after quietly caving on their well-publicized overbilling dispute, aka the DLA Pipergate fiasco, the good ol’ boys actually took over the #1 ranking in the...
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The Billable Hour is Dead to Me (And Why it Should Be Dead to You, Too)
Time for some straight talk. Big Client, you might want to sit down. Your trusted fiduciaries, i.e., BigLaw (pick your favorite, they are all equally guilty), have been stealing from you, for as long...
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The BigLaw Con Game
First, a little history. In the beginning, lawyers used a form of value billing to price their services. The lawyer would be given an assignment, he would complete the task(s) and provide a bill “For...
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A Client’s Worst Nightmare: When Your Attorney Becomes a Bigger Foe Than Your...
Back in 2013, when the NY Times ran the now infamous DLA Piper “Churn that bill, baby!” article, I wrote a post asking for a client to provide me with some actual DLA Piper bills and I would offer up...
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