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Hang Together, or Be Hung Separately: The Collective Compensation Dynamic

By Ed Poll
January 30, 2008

Law firms, in many ways, mirror their clients/customers. To the extent that law firms provide the service their clients need, at the price clients are willing to pay, they will grow. Otherwise, they will be challenged to stay in business. Every law firm, like every other business, has three common functions that must be done to ensure success: Get the Work (sales); Do the Work (production); and Get Paid (finance). Lawyers need to understand the interaction between what law firms charge clients for their services, how effectively they collect their fees from clients, and how lawyers themselves are compensated for the work that they bill. The goal of that understanding should be creating an integrated approach to the entire issue of fees, collection, and compensation.

Many lawyers, unfortunately, seem to lack an understanding of this integration concept and refuse to look beyond the immediate impact of their own hourly rates. The broader implications of how fees, collections, and compensation interact tend to diminish and be depreciated. Yet nothing is more important to the future of a law firm's financial success than removing the fees issue from the individual context alone and placing it at the heart of the firm's financial life.

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