In The News . . . . Different Corporate Clients May Get Different Rates For Same Type Of Work, Study Suggests, And Canada Supreme Court Chief Justice Worried That Attorney Hourly Rates May Shut Out The Middle Class

CT TyMetrix/Corporate Executive Board Study Shows Client Pay More For Larger Firms and Southern City Rates Have Risen the Highest.

     CT TyMetrix, a provider of online law department analysis, and the Corporate Executive Board, which offers similar advice to corporations, have come up with a study entitled “The 2010 Real Rate Report,” based on analyzing $4.1 billion in invoices from 3,500 law firms in 50 metropolitan areas from 2007-2009. Some of the findings are interesting, to say the least, as summarized by G.M. Filisko’s article in the February 2011 edition of the ABA Journal.

     The Report suggests that firms charge different rates to different corporate clients for the same type of work, and the longer companies stick with a law firm, the more likely they’ll pay more than new clients.

     Nearly one in five lawyers increased their hourly rate by $100 or more from 2007 to 2009 in the studied firms, with associates logging the biggest percentage increases. Jumps in partners’ and associates’ rates have outpaced tuition increases at four-year private colleges, blue- and white-collar hourly wages, and producer and housing price indexes since 2000.

     The hourly rate that could be charged had little to do with lawyer experience, with the two biggest factors being where the lawyer was working and how big the lawyer’s firm was.

     Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. locations add about $131 to a lawyer’s rate, even though Austin, Nashville, Houston, Richmond, Atlanta, and Dallas saw the largest regional hourly rate increases, according to the study.

     Clients also pay about $10 more for every 100 additional lawyers at a firm and about $100 more for a partner’s time, regardless of the partner’s experience.

Middle Class Shutout Is a Concern By Canada Supreme Court Chief Justice.

     As reported by Kirk Makin in a February 10, 2011 post on The Globe and Mail, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin of the Canada Supreme Court is concerned that the middle class cannot hope to pay legal fees that average $338 per hour, leaving them little option but to represent themsevles in pro per or go away empty-handed–a disparate situation from legal access available to the very rich and very poor. Apparently, several judges, lawyers and academics from Canada, Britain and the United States shared her perspective. Chief Justice McLachlin cited U.S. studies finding that up to two-thirds of middle-income individuals with legal needs do not approach a lawyer because of the cost. Some of the solutions batted around at the University of Toronto conference were universal legal insurance plans, legal hotlines, panels of legal experts capable of providing advice online, and “unbundling” (hiring a lawyer for one specific aspect of a case).

Clevand Indians:  6.  Washington Senators:  0

Shut Out.  Bob Feller, pitching.  Aug. 22, 1951.

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