Five Ways FisherBroyles Creates Better Value for Clients

In the past several posts, I’ve talked about the financial benefits, collaborative atmosphere and improved quality of life that I’ve encountered since joining the distributed platform law firm, FisherBroyles LLP. All those pluses add up to one very happy lawyer and, judging from the comments on my previous posts from FisherBroyles colleagues, I’m definitely not the only one.

So, the distributed platform model is great for lawyers, but does our way of doing business make any difference to clients?

Absolutely it does.

That’s because FisherBroyles’ economic model differs fundamentally from Big Law’s economic model. That difference permits FisherBroyles to deliver Big Law type representation without the Big Law price tag.

Let me show you five ways we create better value for our clients.

First, FisherBroyles’ lawyers don’t have to bill hours every year just to pay for swanky offices in the high-rent districts of big cities across the U.S. That saves our clients a pretty penny every single year.

Second, and here’s one of Big Law’s dirty little secrets – Big Law profits by leveraging the steep hourly rates of its less experienced lawyers (called associates) for on the job learning. This approach – predicated in part on the law’s long tradition of apprenticing as a way to teach the law – results in a team of junior lawyers learning their craft while billing their firm’s clients for time spent on a matter.

To be fair, that’s exactly how I learned to practice law – as a Big Law associate fresh out of law school getting paid an incredibly high salary in exchanging for working late nights and weekends to make my “goal” of 2,000 billable hours a year. Back then, the firm’s clients picked up the costs of training me (at my regular hourly rate) and I got to spend the day in the firm’s law library learning the law and the partners at my firm made a tidy profit from me and the 28 other associates in my first -year class.

We don’t have associates to train at FisherBroyles. Just highly experienced, knowledgeable partners, the vast majority of whom have escaped Big Law to bring their years of training and experience in Big Law to bear in a much more reasonable and incredibly modern setting. Because we have no associates, we have no need to allocate work to a bevy of less experienced lawyers. That saves clients a bundle. (And because our approach to compensation differs dramatically from Big Law, we are able to provide first-rate legal representation at hourly rates that are significantly less than they would be if we still worked in Big Law.)

Third, unlike Big Law, we have no minimum billable hours requirements at FisherBroyles. In Big Law, lawyers are universally (and unilaterally) “expected” (i.e., required) to make their annual “numbers,” whatever their annual numbers may be. (At some firms, it may be 1,800 hours per year. At others, it could be 2,400 per year.) That’s how Big Law feeds the machine to continue to create those incredible “per partner profits” you see every year.

We have none of that at FisherBroyles. If a partner at our firm only wants to bill 1,000 hours per year, that’s totally OK. Same for the partner who wants to bill 2,000 hours a year. And, unlike Big Law, our compensation model means that my partner’s decision to limit his hours has absolutely no impact on my compensation. At FisherBroyles, we’re all self-directed and we get to make our own choices.

Fourth, which is really a corollary of reasons two and three – because we have no associates and no minimum billables, there is absolutely no pressure at FisherBroyles to leverage each client’s matter with a team of associates or other lawyers. That isn’t how our firm works.

A quick anecdote – one of my current clients has an important relationship with a key partner that requires me to reach out to the other side from time-to-time to talk about important issues that impact the parties’ agreement or that require consensus. That’s not unusual and, ordinarily, I would just pick up the phone and call my compatriot on the other side to chat about the issue.

I can’t do that with this particular Big Law firm.

Why? Because this particular Big Law firm requires that every single communication with me be teed up to involve 2 or 3 lawyers on their side. And its not because they think I’m so crafty that it requires a team of lawyers to keep me in check. I’m pretty sure they do this for all matters.

Finally, clients are entitled to a lawyer who’s at the top of their game. FisherBroyles’ distributed platform model has helped me rediscover the satisfaction I get from practicing law and helping people. Does that make a difference to clients? You better believe it—nobody likes a burned out lawyer. And, happy clients not only keep coming back, they give referrals.

My initial series of posts on how FisherBroyles improves upon law firm workplace issues will be coming to an end soon. It’s been very easy to make the firm and its way of doing business look attractive. But next, I’m going to look at the type of person who actually wouldn’t be a good fit for a distributed platform model law firm. There are a lot of benefits, but the model is not for everyone.

Please don’t hesitate to message me on Linkedin or contact me at [email protected] if you have any questions or comments.