Forget Marble Floors: Flat Fees Fill Ex-BigLaw Partner's Client List at New IP Shop
A former partner of Drinker Biddle & Reath credits a flat-fee billing structure for her new intellectual property boutique’s rapid acquisition of clients and a solid book of business.
Many of those she now represents followed Kathryn Doyle, who formerly headed Drinker Biddle’s life sciences practice, to her new shop, the Riverside Law Firm, in suburban Philadelphia, she tells the Legal Intelligencer.
All of her clients at Drinker Biddle shifted to Riverside, apparently attracted by the promise of a no-surprises series of legal bills, shortly after the boutique opened its doors Nov. 1, she says, suggesting that this is an example of how the traditional law firm paradigm is shifting.
“You can’t always expect just to make more and more and more money out of a client,” she tells the legal publication. “Law firms haven’t been listening as a mass. We wanted to be sure our clients knew we heard them. The days of the marble floors and ostentatiousness of a lot of law firms are over.”
