I think most attorneys would love to be able to do away with the billable hour and achieve a method of billing that is both fair to the client and provides a living for the attorney which reflects the skill, knowledge and dedication the attorney puts forward into representing a client.  I think this is an appropriate issue to be thinking about is we move forward into 2007.

Over the years there have been various ideas discussed including flat fee billing, value billing as well as unbundling or à la carte services (where the client only purchases the services they specifically desire). There are numerous books published by the American Bar Association including Winning Alternatives to the Billable Hour: Strategies That Work by James A. Calloway and Mark A. Robertson and BILLING INNOVATIONS by Richard C. Reid on alternatives to traditional hourly billing.

A recent post on the American Bar Association Solesez  listserv discussed the idea of simply charging clients a set amount each year for the representation.  In many ways, this would be similar to legal service plans offered to employers and employees by companies such as ARAG Legal Solutions are those listed on the American Prepaid Legal Services Institute website  where they can obtain legal services for a set monthly fee.

I did some of this in my own practice for clients with corporations and limited liability companies I formed for them: at the beginning of each year I charged a set dollar amount to serve as registered agent, prepare the annual reports and any minutes or other documentation needed to accurately reflect the year's events in the books and records of the company.  However, the discussion on Solosez goes beyond this and looks at modeling your entire billing practice on this annual fee model or a modification of this model by providing a set fee for most services and anything in excess of those services being on an hourly basis.  The Solesez discussion also included reference to the business model undertaken by Virginia attorney William Ellyson.

The October 2005 edition of the Virginia Lawyer magazine contained an article on attorney Ellyson and his practice and billing model. It's clear from this article that attorney Ellyson is very happy with his decision and that his practice and billing model appears to be working for him.  He has used this opportunity to limit his practice to representing only small businesses, but perhaps this business and billing model could be used in other practice areas as well.

Attorney Ellyson lays out his billing practices and charges on his website: at a minimum I think this information is worth reviewing to give one pause to consider the possibilities of changing the way we interact with our clients and earn our livings. As lawyers throughout the country face increased competition from document preparation companies, online legal service providers and other entities, we need to take a hard look at our business models and how to deliver quality legal services to clients at prices they can afford and which allow an attorney to operate a law office or firm and make a living for him or herself as well as their staff.

So make a resolution for 2007: resolve to review your billing practices and consider whether or not both you and your clients are best served by your existing methods or if a change would be beneficial.

Some folks are having a problem with the link I provided in my original post, which I apolgize for to everyone. I've had someone outside of my office try the followng link which worked fine for them, so try this (remember to clear cookies before using this link, otherwise the $499 price may also appear in your shopping cart):www.digitalriver.com/promo=164080  which should take you directly to the shopping cart and online store with the $99 price.Sorry about that, must be ghosts in the machine

Nerino

I hope everyone has survived Christmas and is looking forward to a prosperous New Year; I survived traveling between two states and coming back to work on Tuesday.  Not surprising, vendors are offering end of year last-minute deals on their products and now is a good time to upgrade or add new programs if you don't already have something you need.  One case in point is that Nuance is offering OmniPage Professional 15 for $99!

OmniPage professional is one of the leading Optical Character Recognition (OCR) programs available and includes PDF Create! 4 and PDF Converter 4 which allow users to create PDF's from their existing files and create documents from existing PDF files. OmniPage professional 15 also includes the ability to create electronic forms from your paper documents .

To take advantage of this upgrade special by the end of the year go to: http://tinyurl.com/fybs6

With the holidays fast approaching, wouldn't it be nice to be able to speak to a human voice rather than an automated attendant when trying to get help with your Christmas gadgets?  This is where GetHuman.com may be of help. According to the GetHuman website:

"The gethuman project is a consumer movement to improve the quality of phone support in the US. This free website is run by volunteers and is powered by over one million consumers who demand high quality phone support from the companies that they use. " 

GetHuman provides phone numbers and "cheats" to try and get you connected to a human as quickly as possible.  GetHuman has also created a set of customer service standards with which it is using to grade service providers and the ability for customers to receive satisfactory phone service.

The Seattle Times published an article on this project which can be found here. 

Google continues to expand the services it offers on the Internet to now include patent searches with the release of the Google Patent Search tool (Beta) . For those lawyers who are confronted with issues regarding to patents, this new tool may prove to be a boon to improving efficiency and improved usability when trying to find information. According to the "About Google Patent Search" page:

 As part of Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, we’re constantly working to expand the diversity of content we make available to our users. With Google Patent Search, you can now search the full text of the U.S. patent corpus and find patents that interest you.

Internet users can now easily search the entire US Patent and Trademark Office image database which Google has converted using the same technology it has used in its Google Book Search.  As with other Google search tools, there is a Basic and Advanced Patent Search option; the Advanced Patent Search provides the ability to search by Patent Number, Inventor Name, Assignee, current US Classification Number, International Classification, Issue Date and Filing Date.

As a test, I decided to search Google Patent to see if I could locate information on several patents held by my father-in-law, James Muehlenbein, and his company Novel Products, Inc.  which provides quality fitness testing, therapy and health education products.

The first step was to go to Advanced Patent Search and enter my father-in-law's name is shown in the screenshot. (Click on image to enlarge)

The search returned the following results page which listed my father-in-law's patents. (Click on image to enlarge)

Clicking on one of these results takes you to the patent page shown here which is for measurement device used in calculating body fat percentages.  (Click on image to enlarge)

 As you can see from the above image, the patent page provides information on different aspects of the patent including the Abstract, Drawing, Description and Claims of each patent with links to each section as well as a link to the patent at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

When searching on his name failed to turn up all the patents that I knew his company held, I then resorted to searching on descriptive terms and found several others.

One notice of some importance is according to the Google blog, is that the ability to save and print is still being worked on by the company.

For the layperson and attorneys who are seeking general information, Google Patent Search should prove to be very handy and easy to use tool.

For additional information you can check out the following posts and articles:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-you-can-search-for-us-patents.html

http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/12/14/HNgooglesearchespatents_1.html

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,128203-c,google/article.html