This week, in the true spirit of Halloween, we’re talking about zombies…and billable hours. As my friend Peter Carayiannis says, “The billable hour is a zombie…We can’t actually kill it. Every time you kill one, another comes out.” And he should know, because he’s dedicated his career to building a law firm that doesn't use it!

Want to watch this tip instead? If you missed last week's tip, you can read it here. 

Before we get to those zombie billable hours, I want to share just how excited Karen & I are about our upcoming workshop on matter management boards. If you're looking for an easy-to-learn, super-affordable way to stay on top of all of your open matters or manage a particularly complex file, join us for 2 hours packed with actionable information AND live Q&A.

And because we’re totally committed to making sure you have all the tools you need to start using these boards, we’re adding in a second live Q&A session the following week, once you've had time to put your new skills into action. Get on the waiting list now. Everyone on the list before noon Eastern on November 18 will get a discount!

So, back to the zombie that is the billable hour. We first wrote about trying to kill it back in 2015. This weekend, I googled “is the billable hour dead” and got about 200,000 results in under a second. I even found an “obituary” for it.

Five years ago, the Ontario Court of Appeal questioned the conflict of interest that underpins the billable hour, saying, “There is something inherently troubling about a billing system that pits a lawyer’s financial interest against that of its client and that has built-in incentives for inefficiency.”

Those incentives to inefficiency remain. Despite many protestations to the contrary, the billable hour is definitely not dead.

Today’s tip: There’s a way you can put a few nails in its coffin, resolve some of that conflict with clients, and increase your margins.

The key is to look for places in your practice where you can quantify the value you’re delivering and what it costs you to deliver it. You don't have to go whole hog and switch an entire practice area or matter type to alternative fees. We want you to start small.

Look for elements of your practice, segments of a matter type, that are routine. Maybe it's a standard type of conveyancing or a particular motion you do all the time, or the incorporation of newcos as special purpose vehicles in M&A transactions.

It may only be a tiny part of a larger matter. But you can optimize it.

• Eliminate any wasteful steps or rework.
• Push it down to a lower-cost resource (or even outsource it).
• Create a standard form and a standard process for completing it.
• If it's appropriate, automate it. Even the very basic document automation you can accomplish with macros in Word will reduce your time and effort.

You will be able to offer that one element for a fixed fee that makes your client happy and generates more revenue for you.

You’ll be giving your clients certainty for at least some aspects of their matters, and you'll be able to improve your own margins for that kind of work. If you do it right, you’ll spend less time and make more money on the aspects of your matters that you flat fee.

And that’s this week’s tip: start slaying the billable hour zombies by finding some aspects of your work, even small ones, that you can flip to flat fees.

Join us next week for more on building a more profitable and productive law practice. Karen’s going to introduce her monthly writing tip aimed at improving how you communicate.

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Thanks a lot everybody! See you next week for Karen’s writing tip.