1.31.2009

LAWYERS: BILLABLE HOUR VS. FLAT FEE VS. SUCCESS FEE

horas trabalhadas/horas faturáveis vs. honorários fixos vs. honorários de êxito/sucesso
loss of suit cost / losing party’s cost = honorários da sucumbência

"I'm a Trial Lawyer, I Bill by the Hour... This Needs to be Fixed". "Evan Chesler, a Cravath lifer and the firm’s presiding partner (Cravath, Swaine & Moore), writing in Forbes, has become the most recent high profile lawyer to call for nthe end of the billable hour. In the upcoming issue of Forbes, in an article called “Kill the Billable Hour,” he writes: “The billable hour makes no sense, not even for lawyers. If you are successful and win a case early on, you put yourself out of work. If you get bogged down in a land war in Asia, you make more money. That is frankly nuts.” (http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0112/026.html)

"Lawyers are having trouble defending the most basic yardstick of the legal business — the billable hour. ... Mr. Chesler, who is an advocate of the new billing practices, said that instead of paying for hours worked, more clients are paying Cravath flat fees for handling transactions and success fees for positive outcomes, as well as payments for meeting other benchmarks. He said that such arrangements were still a relatively small part of his firm’s total business, but declined to discuss billable rates and prices in detail." [International Herald Tribune - http:// www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/30/business/hours.3-419545.php]