How did hourly billing become the norm for the law profession?
MR: Hourly billing wasn’t always the norm. Abraham Lincoln didn’t keep timesheets. Up until the mid-1960s, most lawyers didn’t either. Two things happened: a study done at the time showed that lawyers who keep track of their time made more money and the Supreme Court ruled that minimum fee schedules were an unconstitutional restraint of trade. Other professions were billing by the hour, and the technology of the day—pegboard time slips and rudimentary billing systems—made it easier to track hours and bill accordingly. It became easier for business clients and their accounting departments to measure the work performed. The rest is history. Why should lawyers consider alternate billing methods? MR: Clients will drive the change to alternative billing. There is a great pressure by individual clients to have their lawyers tell them what something will cost. The value to the consumer is the results obtained, not the time it took to get those results. Businesses, particularly those with soph
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