The Advantages of Flat Fee Billing For Law Firms and Clients

Many law firm owners, including myself, have toyed for a long time with the idea of flat fee billing, only to put it off for another day. Frankly, I’m not surprised. 

Going from the traditional model of hourly billing to flat fee billing is a significant deviation from the status quo, making the prospect of transition not insubstantial. Like any disruption, it was the cause of unease for me and a few sleepless nights, I must admit, as I contemplated whether this was the best decision for us. And for us today.

That said, I am a big believer that with change comes progress. So, I decided this past year to push ahead and gradually began implementing a flat fee billing structure into our business model. I’m happy to report that it’s looking good. 

Consequently, at our last leadership meeting, we made plans to continue with our rollout in 2024, with other significant developments to come that will make flat fee billing work even more optimally for our clients and us. Flat fee billing appears to have been — and continues to be — the right choice for our law firm. Here’s why. 

But first, a brief explanation of what flat fee billing in law firms entails. 

What is a flat fee?

A flat fee billing model is how it sounds: A law firm or business entity charges one fee for a single service. 

Once the client pays that fee, they get what they pay for. No one should turn around and say, “Hey, I didn’t estimate this correctly, so we need to charge you more.” 

If, as a business owner, you have done your research, such a scenario should never happen. And if you, for whatever reason, don’t get the pricing right, well, that should be on you, not your client. Make those tweaks moving forward. 

Flat fees notoriously work best for certain types of services, given their ability to be estimated accurately. Therefore, we have begun charging a flat fee for our estate planning services and relationship agreements since these practice areas easily lend themselves to this billing method.

That being said, at Elise Buie Family Law Group, we are not shy. Or afraid of a challenge, which is the inspiration behind why we are currently crafting more unique ways to apply flat fee billing to other family law services that tend to be less predictable. 

The thing is, family law and divorce law clients want predictability. Guess what? So do our attorneys. More about that below.

Why might a law firm want to consider flat fee billing?

There are numerous reasons a law firm may wish to try flat-fee billing. Here are three that I can think of, but I’m inclined to think we will uncover more benefits as we lean into integrating flat fee billing into our billing structure.

Flat fee billing offers clients and attorneys clarity.

As I was just saying, family law clients want to know as much as possible from the get-go about how much their case will cost to resolve. This is especially true for divorce clients, who have heard too many stories of and watched too many movies about divorce costs spiraling out of control due to increasing animosity between them and their soon-to-be ex. 

Such situations can become stressful for clients, who keep receiving invoices for every task, large and small, and us for having to field those angry phone calls every time they get another invoice they weren’t anticipating and hadn’t budgeted for. I get it. I went through a divorce once, too, and, at one point, I didn’t even have money to buy myself a chai tea because money was so tight. 

Knowing what was in front of me in terms of divorce costs would have helped me manage my anxiety and budget a whole lot better. We want this for our clients. And us because the less time we spend fielding those frantic calls about invoicing, the more time we have to resolve our clients’ issues, the ones that brought them to us in the first place. 

Flat fee billing promotes efficiency.

If it’s not yet apparent that flat-fee billing makes law firms more efficient, then it bears repeating. You’ve already read one example about how flat fees offer clients clarity on pricing for their matters. So, let’s turn to another example of how flat-fee billing promotes efficiency that may not be so obvious: Flat fees allow us, as lawyers, to provide a higher level of client care. 

As I mentioned above, lawyers who use hourly billing are encouraged by the very nature of the model to bill for any time spent on a client’s case. This includes answering every email and phone call as they roll in. Preparing for and going to court. And let’s not forget delays at court. Tick tock. Tick tock. 

The hours build, and what happens? Lawyers, under a traditional hourly billing model, are rewarded. The more hours attorneys bill, the more the law firm values them. This, unfortunately, is not usually the case for the client, who, by the very nature of the billing system they are caught up in, cannot see the forest for the trees. In other words, they cannot see how competent and exceptional their lawyer is because they keep getting “trees” — those monthly invoices — in their inboxes.  

With a flat fee billing model, efficiency is the name of the game for the attorneys because they are evaluated not on how many hours they spend on their cases but on how many cases they can resolve. It thus works in their interest to prevent those little fires from ever getting started.

How? Instead of ratcheting up the stress between divorce clients and their exes (and whomever else), the lawyer is incentivized to work even harder to promote amicable relations between adversaries and positive co-parenting relationships for couples with kids. This keeps clients calmer. The calmer the client, the fewer fires that need putting out, the fewer emails that go back and forth, and the less need to go to court.

You may be thinking: But not every email is about an ongoing crisis. Some of these emails and calls actually concern legitimate questions from clients about the type of matter they are engaged in, such as the divorce process. Put simply, there may be concepts the client doesn’t understand and require further explanation. We recognize this need, too.

Fortunately, we have been doing this for a long time, and because of that, we can anticipate many of our clients’ questions. This is where our resources come in, resources our clients have access to, and there are many. 

As it stands now, there will be more resources as we continue to develop our university-style educational system, where our clients will have 24-hour access to articles, videos, ebooks, and learning modules so they can become familiar with their legal issues and answer their burning questions, even when they come up in the middle of the night. 

Of course, our lawyers will still be available and happy to answer our clients’ calls and emails. But with our university system, which will also include lessons on how to communicate more efficiently with their lawyer (for example, how to bundle numerous questions in one email), and of course, their soon-to-be ex-spouse, there should be fewer calls and emails. This leaves more time for us to focus, work on the pressing issues, and resolve them. 

Our university system’s overarching goal and purpose is that our clients will become so comfortable with their cases that they will sleep better at night. Knowledge equals power. Power equals control. Control equals calm. Calm is how legal clients should feel. That is, if their law firm is serving them as efficiently as possible.

As for attorneys, they, too, deserve to work in a peaceful environment, not an atmosphere where they are forced to meet an arbitrary number of billable hours yearly, billable hours which don’t necessarily correlate to the level of care lawyers should be expected to provide their clients with. Or themselves, for that matter. Work-life balance (or, as I say, life-work balance, emphasis on the life part) matters.

Taking it one step further, the ease of billing can save on administrative costs. Law firms won’t need to spend as much time and money on billing and can reallocate those resources elsewhere.  

Flat fee billing allows law firms to stay competitive.

The legal landscape is continually evolving. There’s always new technology to learn, changes in the law to stay abreast of, and potential for expansion to explore. Law firms are businesses, after all, and the goal is to remain profitable while experiencing growth. 

It’s no secret that competition is fierce — for retaining clients and for hiring. Flat fee billing can be one of the elements that help to set you apart by enabling you to realize your vision for your clients, your team members, your law firm, and your life.

If you're interested in learning more about Elise Buie Family Law Group and the possibility of joining our team, please check out our current job openings.

Elise Buie, Esq. is a Seattle-based family and divorce lawyer and founder of the Elise Buie Family Law Group. A champion for maintaining civility throughout the divorce process, Elise advocates for her clients and the best interests of their children, helping them move forward with dignity and from a position of strength.