5 ms·

Seriously, this. It is such bs, since most lawyers are incentivized to take as much time as necessary since they work on an hourly basis.

vermontdevil 9y ago
Umm no. Not all lawyers. They do take time because they want to win. And sometimes they have to be sure as some cases can be complicated.
- bigchewy 9y ago
  Ummm unless lawyers somehow have evolved different brains than the rest of us, they, too, prefer to make more money vs less. So if they are billing hourly, then yes they all do want to spend more time. Now, they might fight against that urge (E.g. believing that spending less time on Client A will improve their reputation and lead to more clients) but your statement is naive re how incentives work
  - enraged_camel 9y ago
    Just because you bill a client hourly doesn't mean it's in your best interest to drag things on. This is true across all professions, not just legal. The only thing hourly billing does is shift the risk to the client.
  - gamblor956 9y ago
    Lawyers in criminal cases generally work on a fixed fee basis, so working needless hours on one client means less work they can do on other clients. Celebrity lawyers charge hourly, but that is because their clients are so much more demanding that they generally only work on a single client's case at a time. Lawyers in tort cases bill on a contingency basis, so working more does not change their payout--success is all that matters. Lawyers in transactional cases usually bill hourly, because when you're talking about multi-million or multi-billion dollar transactions, the few thousand you spend on the lawyers and accountants is a rounding error compared to what you spend on the airfare for the executives negotiating the deal.
rayiner 9y ago
You can’t change the underlying economics of a market by changing your billing model. All the billing model does is change the risk allocation between the parties. Court cases take a long time because each judge handles hundreds of cases (and civil cases take a back seat to criminal cases). Briefing on a motion, for example, might be done over a few weeks. Then the parties just sit and wait possibly for months for a decision. Trial calanders are booked years in advance.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  How long has this been the case? Was it ever thus?
- bob_theslob646 9y ago
  Maybe not in the legal field, but the counter example is online advertising (ppc). The better question is why are there not more judges? Everything is also bound by time.Unfortunately in the legal system there is just no incentive to go fast.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    Ad agencies generally use a variety of fee structures: https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/advertising-agency-fee-structures-4029.html https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/advertising-agency-fee-st.... If you step back one level of abstraction, I'm not sure pay-per-click nets advertises more ad revenue than other billing models would, it's just an easy way to calculate things. And in the legal field, fixed fee or hybrid fee structures are very common. In practice, those options aren't cheaper than just negotiating for a discount on hourly rates; they just allocate the risks over/under-estimation differently. Also, plaintiffs have huge incentives to move cases along quickly, because very often some or all of their compensation is tied to the outcome. But cases with contingency lawyers who aren't getting paid until the client gets paid don't move any more quickly than other kinds of cases. As for why there are not more judges: what do you think of this proposal to create a whole bunch of new judgeships? https://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/calabresi-court-packing-memo.pdf https://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/calabre....
hobbyjogger 9y ago
The lawyers in this specific case work for a non-profit (Institute for Justice) that did not bill Järlström a single dollar. http://ij.org/ij-receives-charity-navigators-highest-rating-16-years-running/ http://ij.org/ij-receives-charity-navigators-highest-rating-...

vermontdevil 9y ago

Umm no. Not all lawyers. They do take time because they want to win. And sometimes they have to be sure as some cases can be complicated.

bigchewy 9y ago
Ummm unless lawyers somehow have evolved different brains than the rest of us, they, too, prefer to make more money vs less. So if they are billing hourly, then yes they all do want to spend more time. Now, they might fight against that urge (E.g. believing that spending less time on Client A will improve their reputation and lead to more clients) but your statement is naive re how incentives work
- enraged_camel 9y ago
  Just because you bill a client hourly doesn't mean it's in your best interest to drag things on. This is true across all professions, not just legal. The only thing hourly billing does is shift the risk to the client.
- gamblor956 9y ago
  Lawyers in criminal cases generally work on a fixed fee basis, so working needless hours on one client means less work they can do on other clients. Celebrity lawyers charge hourly, but that is because their clients are so much more demanding that they generally only work on a single client's case at a time. Lawyers in tort cases bill on a contingency basis, so working more does not change their payout--success is all that matters. Lawyers in transactional cases usually bill hourly, because when you're talking about multi-million or multi-billion dollar transactions, the few thousand you spend on the lawyers and accountants is a rounding error compared to what you spend on the airfare for the executives negotiating the deal.

rayiner 9y ago

You can’t change the underlying economics of a market by changing your billing model. All the billing model does is change the risk allocation between the parties. Court cases take a long time because each judge handles hundreds of cases (and civil cases take a back seat to criminal cases). Briefing on a motion, for example, might be done over a few weeks. Then the parties just sit and wait possibly for months for a decision. Trial calanders are booked years in advance.

dredmorbius 9y ago
How long has this been the case? Was it ever thus?
bob_theslob646 9y ago
Maybe not in the legal field, but the counter example is online advertising (ppc). The better question is why are there not more judges? Everything is also bound by time.Unfortunately in the legal system there is just no incentive to go fast.
- rayiner 9y ago
  Ad agencies generally use a variety of fee structures: https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/advertising-agency-fee-structures-4029.html https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/advertising-agency-fee-st.... If you step back one level of abstraction, I'm not sure pay-per-click nets advertises more ad revenue than other billing models would, it's just an easy way to calculate things. And in the legal field, fixed fee or hybrid fee structures are very common. In practice, those options aren't cheaper than just negotiating for a discount on hourly rates; they just allocate the risks over/under-estimation differently. Also, plaintiffs have huge incentives to move cases along quickly, because very often some or all of their compensation is tied to the outcome. But cases with contingency lawyers who aren't getting paid until the client gets paid don't move any more quickly than other kinds of cases. As for why there are not more judges: what do you think of this proposal to create a whole bunch of new judgeships? https://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/calabresi-court-packing-memo.pdf https://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/calabre....

hobbyjogger 9y ago

The lawyers in this specific case work for a non-profit (Institute for Justice) that did not bill Järlström a single dollar. http://ij.org/ij-receives-charity-navigators-highest-rating-16-years-running/ http://ij.org/ij-receives-charity-navigators-highest-rating-...