Book ReviewLegal Fees: An Incisive New Guide for Lawyers and Clients

J.W. Toothman and W.G. Ross, Legal Fees: Law and Management. Carolina Academic Press, April 2003, 350 pp. plus appendix, cloth, ISBN 0-89089-068-4, $85.00.

The topical terrain of legal fees has more slippery slopes than a ski resort. In their prior writings, John W. Toothman and William G. Ross have individually helped many lawyers and clients gain a clearer view of many of these slopes and firmer ethical footing on them. Now fans of both writers will be delighted that they've combined their talents to produce an analytically impressive yet highly readable new book on the subject.

Ideal Coauthorship

Treatise readers could not wish for a livelier combination of authors. Both are Harvard Law graduates, experienced litigators and skillful writers. The author of Trial Practice Checklists (West 2001), Toothman is an award-winning, fiercely funny essayist. Many of his short pieces are collected on http://www.devilsadvocate.com/, and some have appeared in past issues of Accounting and Financial Planning for Law Firms.

Ross, a master of systematic and circumspect analysis, is a wry-humored law professor and a scholar with wide-ranging interests (ethics and Constitutional history among them). He authored the landmark study The Honest Hour: The Ethics of Time-Based Billing by Attorneys (Carolina Academic Press, 1996). That still relevant book begins with an intriguing history of legal fees and then meticulously explores the labyrinthine problems and paradoxes of legal time-based billing.

Coverage and Organization

Legal Fees, the new collaboration, summarizes many of the authors' earlier findings and goes on to evaluate current approaches to keeping fees reasonable.

The book addresses two broad areas of legal fees. First, it summarizes and critically analyzes the legal-professional requirements and restrictions governing attorney fees. The chapters addressing these subtopics should be of equal interest to legal practitioners and their clients:

• The Business of Law
• Fees Billed to Clients
• Improper Billing Practices
• Fee Collection & Fee Disputes
• Fees Paid on a Client's Behalf
• Fee Shifting
• Contingent Fees

Second, the book surveys and again critically analyzes modern methods for managing legal fees. Although oriented primarily to corporate law departments, the law firm perspective is covered as well. These chapters address:

• Integrated Fee & Matter Management
• Evaluation & Performance Monitoring
• Selecting Lawyers
• Hourly Fees & Alternatives
• Retention Agreements
• Budgeting Legal Fees
• Billing & Billing Formats

Federal practitioners will find in the Appendix a handy compendium of fee-shifting provisions found throughout the U.S. Code and the Federal Rules of Civil (and Appellate) Procedure.

For a detailed table of contents and the first example of the book's many pointed bits of humor, view the Adobe PDF file downloadable from the publisher's Web page at www.cap-press.com/bookinfo.php3?id=1180.

Reintegrating Values

As the authors observe, fees make legal practice possible, funding even pro bono work; yet fees are also the most exasperating source of lawyer-client friction, and the abuses of some billers elicit public hostility to the entire profession.

In addition to addressing the now widespread concern with billable hours, the authors give needed scrutiny to alternative fee-setting methods. In particular, '11.03 provides a succinct 12-page analysis of problematic incentives in alternative billing arrangements. Full of disturbing insights on arrangements that undermine attorney professionalism, this discussion shows equally well that rules and formulas are no substitute for a spirit of fair dealing on the part of clients.

Beyond its explicit billing-related guidance, Legal Fees offers law firm readers valuable insights into the comparative value of various practitioner activities from the client's perspective. By helping lawyers empathize more deeply with client needs, the book should help avert many of the ethical missteps that complex professional rules were intended to restrain.

Joe Danowsky is the Editor-in-Chief of this newsletter.

J.W. Toothman and W.G. Ross, Legal Fees: Law and Management. Carolina Academic Press, April 2003, 350 pp. plus appendix, cloth, ISBN 0-89089-068-4, $85.00.

The topical terrain of legal fees has more slippery slopes than a ski resort. In their prior writings, John W. Toothman and William G. Ross have individually helped many lawyers and clients gain a clearer view of many of these slopes and firmer ethical footing on them. Now fans of both writers will be delighted that they've combined their talents to produce an analytically impressive yet highly readable new book on the subject.

Ideal Coauthorship

Treatise readers could not wish for a livelier combination of authors. Both are Harvard Law graduates, experienced litigators and skillful writers. The author of Trial Practice Checklists (West 2001), Toothman is an award-winning, fiercely funny essayist. Many of his short pieces are collected on http://www.devilsadvocate.com/, and some have appeared in past issues of Accounting and Financial Planning for Law Firms.

Ross, a master of systematic and circumspect analysis, is a wry-humored law professor and a scholar with wide-ranging interests (ethics and Constitutional history among them). He authored the landmark study The Honest Hour: The Ethics of Time-Based Billing by Attorneys (Carolina Academic Press, 1996). That still relevant book begins with an intriguing history of legal fees and then meticulously explores the labyrinthine problems and paradoxes of legal time-based billing.

Coverage and Organization

Legal Fees, the new collaboration, summarizes many of the authors' earlier findings and goes on to evaluate current approaches to keeping fees reasonable.

The book addresses two broad areas of legal fees. First, it summarizes and critically analyzes the legal-professional requirements and restrictions governing attorney fees. The chapters addressing these subtopics should be of equal interest to legal practitioners and their clients:

• The Business of Law
• Fees Billed to Clients
• Improper Billing Practices
• Fee Collection & Fee Disputes
• Fees Paid on a Client's Behalf
• Fee Shifting
• Contingent Fees

Second, the book surveys and again critically analyzes modern methods for managing legal fees. Although oriented primarily to corporate law departments, the law firm perspective is covered as well. These chapters address:

• Integrated Fee & Matter Management
• Evaluation & Performance Monitoring
• Selecting Lawyers
• Hourly Fees & Alternatives
• Retention Agreements
• Budgeting Legal Fees
• Billing & Billing Formats

Federal practitioners will find in the Appendix a handy compendium of fee-shifting provisions found throughout the U.S. Code and the Federal Rules of Civil (and Appellate) Procedure.

For a detailed table of contents and the first example of the book's many pointed bits of humor, view the Adobe PDF file downloadable from the publisher's Web page at www.cap-press.com/bookinfo.php3?id=1180.

Reintegrating Values

As the authors observe, fees make legal practice possible, funding even pro bono work; yet fees are also the most exasperating source of lawyer-client friction, and the abuses of some billers elicit public hostility to the entire profession.

In addition to addressing the now widespread concern with billable hours, the authors give needed scrutiny to alternative fee-setting methods. In particular, '11.03 provides a succinct 12-page analysis of problematic incentives in alternative billing arrangements. Full of disturbing insights on arrangements that undermine attorney professionalism, this discussion shows equally well that rules and formulas are no substitute for a spirit of fair dealing on the part of clients.

Beyond its explicit billing-related guidance, Legal Fees offers law firm readers valuable insights into the comparative value of various practitioner activities from the client's perspective. By helping lawyers empathize more deeply with client needs, the book should help avert many of the ethical missteps that complex professional rules were intended to restrain.

Joe Danowsky is the Editor-in-Chief of this newsletter.