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Minimizing Client and Internal Pushback on Soft-Cost Recovery

BY Robert C. Mattern
May 26, 2011

My client won't pay for that!”

How many times have you heard that comment from an attorney or paralegal in the last two years? At a typical law firm, it is happening quite often ' and it is only going to get worse. Clients, and the audit firms they employ, are attacking the charging of soft costs as never before. This is having a direct effect on attorneys and paralegals who are trying to keep their clients happy (and their hourly fees intact) by increasingly writing off the charges they think will anger the clients. These actions may be well-intended, but they are having a negative impact on the bottom line of the firm.

Throughout the 14 years we have been advising law firms on their cost recovery strategies, the topic of “pushback” has been mostly anecdotal. In the 2010 Mattern & Associates Cost Recovery Study, we decided to finally quantify what specifically the clients are pushing back and the internal effects this is having on the economics of firms, and develop a strategy that will protect a firm's bottom line.

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