Yet Another Reason to go Small!
Posted by elusivejustice on December 11, 2006
Here is a quote from a great post on MyShingle.com by Carolyn Elefant about the value one gets from a solo or small firm:
“Say you decide to charge a flat fee of $18,000 for an appeal that you predict will take you 40 hours to research, brief and argue at your most efficient. That’s around $450 an hour, $360 even if you take 10 hours more than planned. Moreover, a $18k appeal is a pretty good deal for a company. Now, let’s take that same appeal to the big
Boston law firm. Figure 30 hours for the 5th year associate to reseach and draft the brief ($14,550 at $485/hr), with 15 hours research and proofing assistance from the first year ($4125 at $275/hr). But then once the briefs have been filed, we can assume that an upper level partner will argue the case, so he or she will need at least a conservative 8 hours of review and prep at $600/hour. Suddenly, that appeal is up to $23,475, $5k above what you’ve offered, not to mention better value, since when you argue the case, you’ll have the benefit of having done the research yourself.”
I looked up the list that she references earlier in the post from Law.com and found a large Cincinnati firm. This is the closest to Lexington, Kentucky that I could find:
| Dinsmore & Shohl (306) ( Cincinnati) |
|||
| 1st | $160 | 5th | $200 |
| 2d | $170 | 6th | $210 |
| 3d | $180 | 7th | $215 |
| 4th | $190 | 8th | $225 |
Interesting.
