Legal bill I received today

Legal services: 0.1 hours @ $350/hour = $35 (see attached timesheet)

 

Expenses:  None.

 

Total Amount Invoiced:  $35

This was the entire bill for the month. I'm not sure exactly what to say about this bill.  I think the bill kind of speaks for itself.  To get to the point where they are billing me for 1/10 of an hour is beyond my comprehension. And lawyers wonder why there are so many lawyer jokes!

I don't doubt that there was a phone call that took place, the lawyers billing system can attest to that. But what did we discuss? Was the call 4 minutes or 7 minutes or 5.24 minutes? Grumble. Grumble.

Comments

[Jed]

To approach this from a different direction, you go the bakery and usually purchase a big, frosted yellow cake for $15. You do this once a week for 9 weeks. The 10th week, you go in, ask for a cupcake, and are astonished to be charged $1.25 for the cupcake.

Now, if you're a regular, steady customer, perhaps it would make sense for the bakery to give you a cupcake for free. Generate good will, show they appreciate your business, all of that. But are you entitled to a free cupcake? No.

Lawyers bill for time because that is the product they sell. They don't produce anything tangible, any more than a doctor can give you something tangible.

Under the circumstances, it doesn't sound like something I'd personally bill for–I'd probably generate the invoice but write it off as a courtesy. If you don't remember what was being discussed, this doesn't sound like an instance where it would be worth possibly offending the client (as you apparently were). But, to give a hypothetical scenario, if a substantive amount was done in a ten minute period, why shouldn't you be billed for that time?

[Bradley Coxe]

As an attorney that bills by the hour my opinion is that they should give you an idea of what took place with the phone call. As far as billing only that charge for the whole month, you probably just got caught up in the billing dept. If I have a bill that that and catch it, I'll either no-charge it, or just not bill that month and roll it over. If he bills like I do, he spent 6 minutes or less on the phone call. If he spent 7 minutes, you'd be billed .2 hours or $70.

[Dan]

That bill should never have gone out. It's that simple.

[Richard Bruder]

Stories like this are why the "billable hour" model is a dinosaur.

Since launching my own firm focused on entreprenuers and the investors who fund them, I have consistently followed a FIXED FEE model for my work.

For a lot of projects (including closing a round of funding), the client and I agree up front what the fee will be. No more "phone call .1".

Rich

[RobertinSeattle]

Just be happy they haven't adopted the more common practice these days of rounding up to the nearest half hour, Andy!