So the first thing I’ll tell you about the cost structure of our firm is we bill on an hourly basis. We don’t flat fee matters and our time is our time. Our staffs billing rates are set based on their level of experience and who they are, so at the bottom level we have our paralegals that bill at $150 an hour and at the top level we have me that bills at $525 an hour and then everybody else falls somewhere in between. So the way that we try and mitigate costs for our clients is by spreading work between the different levels. We try and generally have the lowest person who’s competent to do the work do the work in order to save cost. We’re not going to send a paralegal in on a criminal matter or we’re not going to send an attorney to go do $150 hour level work but we try and work within the structure that we have to be as efficient for the client as possible. I’m a small business owner myself and I believe in driving value. I believe in the work that we do providing value to our clients because we’re in tax and, because California and the IRS aren’t going away anytime soon, trust me when I tell you we’re not running out of work. So our team is not really incentivized to bill you any more or any less than what we have to. We bill you as much as
Key Takeaways
- So the first thing I’ll tell you about the cost structure of our firm is we bill on an hourly basis. We don’t flat fee matters and our time is our time.
- we need to to get the job done effectively. We work with our clients to try and mitigate clients’ legal costs because we’re sensitive to the fact that they’re businesses and businesses have a lot of other costs.
we need to to get the job done effectively. We work with our clients to try and mitigate clients’ legal costs because we’re sensitive to the fact that they’re businesses and businesses have a lot of other costs. Whether you’re dealing with a planning matter or a crisis matter, you need to have a good handle on what the cost is going to be and even if the cost is over what you initially project it’s going to be, then you need to have some reasonable basis for the value that’s being delivered. So billing and cost structure at our firm are always an active conversation with our clients. I always want to be fair to the client. I equally want to be fair to our team members, making sure that they’re getting compensated for the work that they’re doing but I try and approach this from a fairness perspective and the leadership team at our firm really tries to do the best that we can to be sensitive to billing issues, to drive value for our clients and overall make our representation affordable and effective.
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