Law Practice Management
No Associates at This Law Firm, Just Consultants
Posted Mar 10, 2008, 10:14 am CDT
By Martha Neil
A Canadian law firm says it has never has a problem with associates over billable hours requirements. That's because it has no associates.
Instead, Thackray Burgess has "consultants" who hire desk space from the 34-attorney business firm at a cost of $800 per month, and do as much or as little work as they want to, reports the Financial Post. The firm also takes a negotiated percentage of their billings.
The consultant attorneys set their own hours and can also work from home, if they wish. The Calgary-based firm pays them at a rate schedule that is based on when they graduated from law school.
Shareholder Michael Thackray says the firm's model is a recruiting plus among both young lawyers seeking work-life balance and those who are "more entrepreneurial in spirit." They can either focus their practice entirely on servicing work generated by the firm, or go out and find clients of their own, he notes.
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Comments
Posted by Doug - 3 months, 2 weeks, 6 days, 22 hours, 39 minutes ago
Interesting—I don’t know what the professional malpractice situation in Canada is like, but I imagine US carriers might have a problem with their insured firms using a model like this. Having the same person sometimes practicing within a firm for that firm’s clients, and sometimes just renting space from the firm while working on his/her own clients’ cases could be problematic, since those clients of the “consultants” might reasonably believe themselves to be clients of the firm, no matter how many disclaimers they signed.
Posted by SAM - 3 months, 2 weeks, 6 days, 21 hours, 18 minutes ago
I imagine this works in part because Canada has socialized health care.The model might be more difficult in the US where health care benefits are part and parcel of the associate compensation package.
Posted by Matt - 3 months, 2 weeks, 6 days, 19 hours, 59 minutes ago
I actually used to work for a firm that did things similarly. It was here in the US. It was made clear that any clients were not “my” clients, but were clients of the firm. I got a better split on the hourly rate for clients I brought to the firm. It wasn’t a bad arrangement, in concept. The trouble was some of the partners still expected “associate hours” from the young lawyers, even when there wasn’t that much billable work. So I bailed. But done right, I could see it being a viable approach.
Posted by Joe Reisinger - 3 months, 2 weeks, 5 days, 21 hours, 7 minutes ago
Except for paying lawyers based on when they graduated from law school, how is this different from what a number of firms have been doing in the San Francisco bay area for at least the last 25 years?
Even if I were to do it (and I never would!) I’d never admit to paying lawyers based on when they graduated from law school. As we say when dealing with aviation experts at trial, there are those pilots with 10,000 hours of experience; and there are those who’ve merely experienced the first hour ten thousand times.