3. For Clients: Why Are Lawyers So Expensive?

SeedJura: Decoding Law

In this episode directed primarily to clients of lawyers, Geneve helps to explain why lawyers and legal services always seem so expensive.

(A note from Geneve & Phyllis: we are not trying to justify that lawyers should be expensive, but this area is the biggest gap between lawyers and clients, so we need to look at this from both sides' perspectives.)

In this episode, Geneve & Phyllis first discuss common perceptions about lawyers and legal fees:

• They charge you for everything, even a phone call
• They charge everything based on hourly rate
• Hourly rate is all over the place – some lawyers are $300 per hour and some are $1,200 per hour
• They spend so many hours on everything (and how would clients know how many hours a lawyer should spend on a specific task?)
• Bottom-line: the perception is that lawyers are expensive (and that the charges ≠ value)!

Geneve explains how this perception is an industry problem:

• What lawyers do is often invisible and not easy to understand
• Lawyers are not salespeople – they're usually not good at explaining their value in exchange for what they charge
• Law firm structure – based on billable hours and have many ethical boundaries (this means little flexibility)

Next, Phyllis explains the different ways lawyers can charge you (there's more than one!) and how you can explore different options that fit your business model and that are within your lawyer's’ law firm and ethical parameters:

• Flat fee
• Hourly rate by hours worked (most common)
• Cap fee
• Contingency fee

Finally, Geneve and Phyllis discuss the value that lawyers do actually bring their clients, specifically, the 6 Layers of value that lawyers can bring their clients.

The 6 Layers of Value:

1. Branding

2. Insurance

3. Strategies

4. Representation (negotiation & representing you in the market place)

5. Education

6. Producing Documents (secretarial tasks)

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