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Just Celsius things~
Coach
What do I need to do to make a few million $ by 35?
I am a Senior Consultant on EY’s Digital Forensics team. Our team has been growing rapidly recently and we are looking to hire some folks out on the west coast, specifically for our SF and LA offices. We are hiring at the Senior and Staff levels (including entry level positions in LA). If you are interested in learning more about EY Forensics or learning more the position feel free to reach out!
Anonymous User
Do you always need an MBA to get into MBB?
Additional Posts in Big Law
Mentor
Coach
At what year do you become a midlevel?
Mentor
Subject Expert
Subject Expert
When the partner asks why I missed his deadline
Subject Expert
Enthusiast
Mentor
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Mentor
Ah because big firm billing is always 100% on the up and up…
Mentor
Wut? You legit think, overall, big picture, considering all lawyers involved on any given deal/case and all the bs clients request, that there is more extra legal work billed than written off? You would be wrong.
I would never go to a restaurant, order a meal, and be charged based on how long it took to prepare the meal.
Maybe some do, but in my experience, the rates are often non-negotiable and, even if that is true, the vast majority of professions for services rendered are not negotiable. You just pay the agreed upon rate at outset.
Can easily refuse to work with these clients next time
And they can easily do the same for the firm. The culture of challenging fees though, even by the court to a "lodestar," creates horrible incentives to bundle time that might be written off, avoid bringing on juniors to an understaffed case or giving them traning opportunities (since it affects profit per partner), etc. It's less client specific and more a problem for the industry generally.
Subject Expert
I get what you’re saying, but medicine is probably the last profession I’d use to illustrate pricing transparency and/or meaningful consumer cost negotiation lol.
That aside, I do think hourly billing incentivizes the dynamic you describe. At a certain point, the size of the bill becomes attenuated from the quality of the service, and the client is left looking at a large number without a clear way to tie it to the value received. The only reason clients will consistently accept large bills is if the value is also large (i.e., they’re making or saving a lot of money and the bill represents only a small fraction of that amount). The minute that ratio gets out of whack, clients will understandably start pushing back.
In what regard is medicine different? That you can negotiate with your insurance company technically sort of? It seems to me that pricing transparency and consumer cost negotiation should stop being something they push back on. If they want to hire a big firm, they need to know that there are costs associated with hiring that caliber of lawyer and that they are hiring humans, not robots, so time may be more holistic than they would like it to be. It's the cost of doing business.
Eh my firm doesn’t rly offer discounts, and if clients refuse to pay we tell their auditors they owe us, which shows up as debt on their balance sheets. They pay up pretty soon afterwards.
I worked in large firms for over 20 years. Their billing can be a da Vinci level work of BS. I don’t challenge bills just to pay less but there’s something questionable on pretty much every invoice I get.
That was super thoughtful and helpful. As a total aside, really appreciate you engaging so wholesomely. I feel like a lot of times everyone on here acts like they know everything and would rather dunk on someone asking a good-faith question. This was awesome. Thank you.
Also - whoever wrote about the Plummer definitely has not had to do a lot of work on their house.
It’s always … we can charge you for the visit $2K or we can do xyz because the abc you asked for is connected to qrs, and because we’re bonded we need to do it to code, which will cost $12K. We can give you a pay now 10% discount though.
Plummer