Bog Glob: Saturday posts on the billable hour

Excerpt from "From Cravath: How to Cut Corporate Legal Costs" (BusinessWeek):

..."Hire lawyers who have more work than they know what to do with, because it will force them to be efficient." Lawyers who aren't busy may find that handling a matter expeditiously is not in their interest. "You want the lure of an additional hour to be a bad thing, not a good thing," [Evan R.] Chesler says.

That leads to a third and core bit of counsel: Try to work out fees that are not based on the billable hour. "The billable hour can be a terrible thing," says Chesler. In litigation, he explains, "it creates all the wrong incentives," feeding a system "where it's more profitable to lose than it is to win." ...

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From Lawyers Ditch Billable Hour Structure (NPR via In Search of Perfect Client Service):

Private law firms charge their clients a fortune in billable hours. Now, some firms are doing away with this form of billing because clients just can't afford it. With the economy failing, some lawyers are finding themselves out of a job too.

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