The Anatomy of Flat Fee Pricing
Now that you want to give flat fee billing a shot, how do you go about putting it into place in your firm and determining the prices?
Here’s a few pointers before we get into the details:
- Flat fee doesn’t mean you need a set price for the entire process. You can set a price for each step of the process. You can also do a mix of flat fee and hourly billing if that’s necessary for your area of practice.
- If it’s a task that you are unsure how many hours it will take, like court appearances, then you can take the average of how long they usually take and make that the flat fee.
- Whether you choose hourly or flat fee, you have to decide in the beginning and then stick with that for the rest of the case.
Pricing
In the beginning, it’s good to compare your price to your hourly rate and how long everything is taking. Now take that number and increase it by 25%.
You want some breathing room because your data may be based off of bills where you cut hours to make it look more reasonable. Also, when you try to implement changes to make tasks more efficient, at first it will actually take longer before it becomes efficient.
The Process
Identify the client’s journey, determine all the steps. Now split it into definable phases. You can then make a flat fee for each phase or some of those phases you might want to do hourly. Putting it into separate phases allows for that mix.
Example for mixing flat fee and hourly:
You may set a flat fee for phase one and two, but phase three has too many variables to predict how long it will take, so that phase will be done hourly and have a retainer.
Try It
Don’t give up on implementing flat fee billing before it’s had enough time to actually show results. Try it for at least three to six months to see the improvements.
Push Through The Resistance and Start Implementing
Flat Fee Billing In Your Firm Today
P.S. It's a lot better if I can show you a real life example for your firm and honestly if you want to see how this can work for your firm and you want to have a chat with me about it, you can simply reach out to me, send me an email. My email address is [email protected]. Just let me know the specifics that you are dealing with and we can hop on a call and have a chat about it. Also if you're comfortable with it, we can potentially even record it and use it for the podcast. Let people listen to it and learn from it as well.
Resources
Episode 26
http://profitwithlaw.com/026
Moshe’s Email Address
[email protected]
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Author
Moshe Amsel
Author
Moshe Amsel the host of the Profit with Law podcast is not an attorney. As the owner of a successful accounting firm DreamBuilder Financial and Law Firm Growth coaching organization Profit with Law, Moshe has proven that there are better and different ways for a law firm to do business and be successful.
