Our legal fees are charged at $420 per hour – government fees, taxes and disbursements are extra.
What is often more appropriate is to offer services under a model that allows our clients to control expenses and have predictable and open pricing. Hourly billing is not our preference as we believe that hourly billing is often not in our clients’ best interest. We also feel that hourly billing is an obstacle to collaboration because there is the constant pressure that the “clock is running” and clients may rush important decisions for fear of a growing bill rather than working efficiently towards resolving the legal issue.
Our collaborative approach ensures that the focus of our service remains on creating and adding value to our clients but also that exceptions arise, clients will understand the implication of those to their end bill. Typically our clients will face additional charges for extra work arising from delays, a change in circumstances prior to completion of work, any unexpected amendments, extended or shortened completion dates, and especially interactions with outside parties (including other lawyers or adverse parties).
The choice is yours but note: all files require retainer funds and a retainer agreement oulining your preferred billing option before work can begin.
The hourly billing system is easy to understand and calculate. However, this type of billing can lead to a conflict with clients in firms where lawyers have billable hour targets.
At Vangenne & Company we don’t have billable hour targets. Instead, we measure our success by the results we achieve for our clients and the value our experience adds instead of by how many hours we bill in a day.
Discussing and agreeing to a flat fee from the start allows you as a client to have the same predictability in budgeting legal expenses you demand in other areas of business and avoids surprises. You know what your costs are and this transfers the risks of inefficiency onto us.
This type of open pricing arrangement is useful in many commercial transactions including incorporation, shareholder agreements, preparation of template documents such as employment letters or agreements or standard form service contracts, policy review and compliance and even some steps in civil litigation.
Sometimes the scope of work requires that a more holistic approach be taken to create a suitably flexible billing plan. Certain aspects may be suitable to have a flat fee option with add on fees for additional work which may, or may not, need to be incorporated.
As early as possible we discuss your goals so we can clearly outline the work and suggest both billing options and time lines that suit your needs. In fact, you may find that we spend a long time discussing issues beyond the initial scope of your file, but that is simply us trying to get a clearer concept of how you like to operate and how one particular file forms part of your overall plan.