Moving away from the billable hour

WHAT THE AUDIENCE LEAVES WITH

01Why time-based pricing is under real pressure now, when earlier challenges to it failed

02How fixed-fee and subscription models work in practice, including scope and fair use

03Where these models go wrong, and what to change when they do

The billable hour has been declared dead since the 1990s, and it is still with us. It survives because it is easy to explain and easy to audit, and because it leaves the risk of a matter running long with the client. Anyone proposing an alternative should be honest about those advantages.

What has changed is the arithmetic. When a task that took twenty hours takes two, a firm billing by time must choose between earning less for the same work and charging for time it did not spend. Neither is sustainable for long, and clients, particularly in-house teams with their own AI tools, are beginning to ask the question directly.

This talk looks at what replaces time as the thing clients buy. It covers how fixed-fee and subscription models work in practice, including how to define the unit of work, how to scope a matter so that a fixed fee remains a fixed fee, how a subscription copes with clients who use it heavily, and where each model tends to go wrong. It is not an argument that one model suits every firm.

Dr Jackie Nagtegaal has spent around two decades building legal services sold by subscription and fixed fee, first in South Africa and now at Lawyerly in the UK.

FORMATS

Keynote, 30 to 45 minutes
Boardroom session for firm leadership
Panel or fireside conversation

SUITS

Law firm partners and boards, general counsel, legal operations, buyers of legal services

SHAPED TO THE EVENT

Length, format and emphasis are agreed with each organiser.