[Note: This is another in a series of posts on “red flags in legal bills.” The posts are taken from my article “Red Flags in Legal Bills: What Warning Signals are Attorneys Sending?”]
Simple documents (especially form documents) should require little, if any revision. While more complex documents may require some minor revision, too much time billed to revise documents or too many people involved in the revisions should always raise a red flag. Here’s why.
[ A full copy of this article is available exclusively to clients of Legal Points, LLC, and Conlon & Associates. If you are a client and would like to receive a copy of this article, please contact jconlon@legalbillaudit.com. ]
It appears that John is speaking to an experienced client. Clients who have never had significant legal work done (and some judges who have less familiarity with a topic than counsel) may think that because they have heard the name of a document before it must be “a form document.”
Most estate planners have plenty of instances of the client who wants “a simple will” but needs and expects something with more complexity.
The article supports the “value pricing” form of pricing for legal services. If a knowing client agrees to pay $XX,XXX for certain legal work, and the lawyer does that work, the client has no need to micro-analyze the billing statements.