It is, in some ways, a challenging time to be an attorney, especially if your clients are corporations. Companies are scrutinizing legal bills and putting downward pressure on legal department budgets. Law firms are having to find evermore inventive ways ...

Tagged with: billing

Building rapport and maintaining constant communication are the keys to sustaining a healthy business relationship between in-house and outside counsel, panelists said at Lawyers Weekly's Business and Law Breakfast Wednesday. About 40 people gathered at the Marriott City Center hotel in downtown Raleigh as panelists Jay Campbell, executive director of the N.C. Board of Pharmacy; Ken Hammer, general counsel and vice president of corporate governance at DataFlux Corp.; and Jeff Miller, vice president, general counsel and secretary of Highwoods Properties discussed the most effective ways for outside firms to attract in-house business.

Tagged with: Billable Hour billing Ethics In-House Counsel legal marketing

Insurance companies hire lawyers as in-house counsel at reduced (wholesale) rates, pay lawyers in accordance with insurance policies for their insureds and otherwise have a dramatic influence over the billing practices in the legal community. Wasn't it insurance companies in or about the 1960s that demanded lawyers submit bills that showed the time expended in matters for which they pay? And then, as a consequence, lawyers began using time increments as a basis for pricing, not just as a management tool.

Tagged with: attorney's fees billing Business of Law Coach's Corner

I recently spoke with an executive whose company makes software to help lawyers record billable time. He discussed failure to record time as a "time leak," because time is lost (and therefore not billed) when an attorney fails to make contemporaneous notations of work being done. Surveys done by the company suggest that at least one in five timekeepers consistently fails to record time contemporaneously, and almost 80 percent record their time days or even weeks later.

Tagged with: Billable Hour billing Coach's Corner Practice Management Revenue

U.S. ex rel. John Owens v. First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting Co. (Lawyers Weekly No. 10-01-0700, 20 pp.) (Wilkinson, J.) No. 09-1899, July 16, 2010; USDC at Alexandria, Va. (Hilton, J.) 4th Cir. Holding: A former general construction foreman for ...

Tagged with: billing Contract false claims act