Ditching the Billable Hour with Sean Jardine: A Revolutionary Approach to Law Firm Pricing

Join us on The Renegade Lawyers Podcast as we dive into a transformative discussion with Sean Jardine, author and advocate for ditching the billable hour. Discover how value-based pricing can lead to happier teams, more satisfied clients, and a better law practice. Sean shares insights from his book and his journey from a traditional law firm CEO to a passionate consultant. Tune in to learn how to elevate your practice beyond the constraints of time-based billing. Don't miss this game-changing episode! 

Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA.

Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com

What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?

In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.

One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.

There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.

We've always been proud of the tools we give lawyers to create the law firms of their dreams. We know exactly what modules you should, software you should utilize, and the strategies you need to employ to build a law-firm that is a cash-generating machine. When someone initially becomes a GLM member, you can bet that they're joining for the tactics and tools that we offer.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

We assume we know what they want, but we don't because we don't ask them. Sometimes we're too busy worrying about the non chargeable work we don't even have the conversation well enough with them at the beginning. We've got to ask lots of questions about them about their families, about their business, about their exit strategies, about what are they trying to achieve. And you know, a great question is, look, take money off the table. How would you wanna work with your lawyer? What is the dream service you would like to have? And, you know, we might think that it we might think it's x y z, and they might say, no, it's ABC. That's what I want. Again, Alright. Okay. Didn't think of that, but yeah, if that's what you want. And then we've gotta say, well, You know, everybody's different. Every consumer is different.

Speaker 2: 0:50

Welcome to the Renegade lawyer podcast, the show where we asked the questions. Why aren't more lawyers living flourishing lives and inspiring others? And can you really get wealthy while doing only the work you love with people you like? Many lawyers are. Get ready to hear from your host Ben Glass, the founder of the law firm, Ben Glass law in Fairfax, Virginia, and great legal marketing. An organization that helps good people succeed by coaching, inspiring, and supporting law firm owners. Join us for today's conversation.

Speaker 3: 1:30

Everyone, welcome back to this has been glasses with the Renegade lawyer podcast where I get to interview in every episode, someone inside or outside of legal who's making a ding in the world and today we're going international. I've got Sean Gardein on the podcast today. Sean is the managing director of a company called big yellow penguin, and he's gonna tell us how he got to that. But more importantly, he's the author of just released book called Ditched Billable Hour. Before we went live, I was telling John, it was probably probably even fifteen or two decade. Fifteen years or twenty years ago, I wrote an article that for an American Journal, that said, the billable hour for words is the dumbest model ever. And why are we still doing that? And then Here he is. Dits the billable hour. Here's the guy from Great Britain and someone who's seeing the song of my soul. Look, in most of my practice, almost all my practice is a contingent fee. So we don't we don't charge clients by the hour. But a lot of our members do, Sean, And so it's great to have you on the podcast today. I've looked at the book. It's just released and it's available at Amazon. I should find out because I have a book for teenage soccer referees. And I found out I was on a podcast by some guys in England. Right? And I'm like, we're getting all these sales from England even though I don't know how the book gets to Amazon in England. I find out it's print on demand in England and boom, I have new fans. Anyway, welcome welcome to the podcast. Great to have you all.

Speaker 1: 2:55

Thank you very much, Ben. I'm delighted to be here. And I also by well, in my youth, I'm no longer a qualified soccer referee, but that's something else we got in common. In additions, like, of the billable hour.

Speaker 3: 3:07

They they made you. I've seen a couple of videos I see videos almost every day of bad stuff happening on football field pitches. And if there's a bunch that have come out, now out of a great bit. And I think it left free got chased off the field by some spectators. Just in the last week. But that's for a different podcast. Look, as I said, a lot of our members do bill by the hour. I've long advocated against it. We're gonna talk about that. But get get us a little bit of your background, and you gotta include, like, the big yellow penguin part But where have you come from?

Speaker 1: 3:40

Okay. Well, I qualified as a lawyer in nineteen eighty six. I was a litigation lawyer. I work I set up my own law firm. I then merged with another law firm. I became CEO of that. I was elected CEO for a three year term, which lasted four years, nine months, eleven days, not that I was counting or anything. And that that business had two hundred and forty seven people in it. Operated in three offices in in rural England. And I got into value based pricing in twenty seventeen when I went to Allen in Texas to a conference organized by a pricing guru called Ron Baker. Got there and there were lawyers of all over the world, Canada, America, New Zealand, Australia. I was the only Brit. I was the only Brit in a room full of Americans and that we had

Speaker 3: 4:33

in Texas.

Speaker 1: 4:34

We had to we had to do a presentation at that event. So I dressed up as a penguin as I do from time to time. And I was waving John Carter from Harvard Business School, his book, r iceberg is melting, which is book that I use for a change management project, and it's perfect for lawyers because you can read it an hour and a quarter. It's got pictures of penguins in it. It's large print. And it's got characters that you can relate to in a law firm. So it's got a penguin called Alice and she's the one who gets stuff done. There's a penguin called the professor who knows lots of stuff but kind of can't necessarily apply it in real life. There's a penguin called no no Oh, no. That won't get done round here. So it was a great book. I used it for the change management project. It has eight very easy steps to follow. And when it came to writing my book, I have unashamedly ripped off John Carter and said, I'm using the same eight steps. I bet should cautious methodology. And then what I did was design eight steps to implementing value based pricing in an offer.

Speaker 3: 5:43

But prior to the conference that you went to in Texas, were you thinking along these lines of value based versus value? Or was that your introduction to? Oh, my gosh. There's a different way of doing that?

Speaker 1: 5:55

My my introduction was via another North American, actually, a Canadian called Mich Kalowski. And Mich Kalowski wrote a book called avoiding extinction reimagining legal services in the twenty first century, which was a pithy novel about If lawyers used all the available tech that was then available properly in their business, what would a law firm look like? And in that, he mentioned a law firm called Valorem, who were doing alternative fee agreements and things like that, a guy called Patrick Lam. And so I thought, okay. I'll look at this guy's website. I'll look he's doing this. It's a bit different. And I got in touch with Mitch Mitch was over in the UK. I wouldn't saw Mitch. You know, I have a great one. I'm great believer, you know, reading books because that's where the knowledge is, you know, and looking to apply it because I don't I I don't think, you know, there's nothing new about running law firms. We just actually have to apply the same principles that are used elsewhere in the wider world. There's nothing unique about law. And that was the book that really started me on this journey. But when I got out to Alan in Texas, Then I met lawyers who were already doing it, having better lives, making more money, staff for happier. They were not living their life in six minute units. And I just saw, I've gotta have some of this, came back to the UK, and then read as much as I could, spoke to as many people across the world as I could, and then I implemented it at my firm with a pilot project. That was my swan song, but I then once that pilot project had been rolled out and successful, I then retired from private practice and then thought, I know I can set this business up and do consulting on a subject that I'm very passionate about because I

Speaker 3: 7:56

want to help make lawyers' lives a little bit easier. When you came back and implemented it as a project at your law firm. What is the problem that you were solving for? Was it simply because you mentioned happiness in living a great life, which is big part of what I talk about. But what was there a specific problem that the law firm or you were helping the law firm solve for.

Speaker 1: 8:20

It wasn't a specific problem because the the firm was, you know, profitable doing well, etcetera. But the principles of value based pricing, you know, are you don't have to do every bit of work that comes through the front door. You have to do more than your fair share of the good stuff. You actually look to don't assume every customer is the same. Every client is the same because they're not sometimes clients are not a good fit, and we need to be able to be prepared to turn that work away. And I I do surveys with law firms. And one of the questions I asked when I survey the staff anonymously and get their data is, Do you work for a firm who make you act for clients that are too difficult to deal with and unprofitable? The answers I get raised for fifty five percent to ninety six percent in one firm. Ninety six percent of their staff thought they were working for people who are just difficult. Who wants to do that? You know, let's empower our people to raise their hands and say this person's not a right fit for us. Let's devote our energies elsewhere.

Speaker 3: 9:32

Exactly. You know, I've always thought that if you can solve for two things, one is the owner's happiness, like, as an owner of a solo or small firm in America in particular, like, are you doing work that you like doing that really energizes it? Energizes you. And then are you doing it with people you like? And that's a whole complex thing about getting the right people in. But then they have to be energized, Sean, by coming to work. Right? We're recording this on a Monday, and a lot of people probably round the work. It's, oh, it's Monday. I have to go back to work. My question to law firm ownership, do you have people that are looking forward to Monday? Because if you solve for number one, which is the lawyer's their owners are happy in doing what they like to do. And you solve for number two, you've got a team that you'll like working with and they like being there. Then the client will be well served. Right? Because it's almost impossible then to screw that up. And for so long, the profession has put the client as number one, and made the lawyer and the team, the sacrificed sacrificed limbs of the client. And we say, why do we do that? That's just crazy. So so in changing a billing model, right, what are the things you think that are just if we were building the profession over again and say, let's do this by the billable hour. Like like, like, will we even build it that way?

Speaker 1: 10:58

No. You wouldn't. But what we do, if we were starting again, we say, look, the strategic objective has gotta be that we're not gonna build by time. We're not gonna do that. We are gonna have conversations with our clients, detailed conversations at the outset, work out what it is they want to achieve because what we as lawyers think they want to achieve sometimes isn't what they want to achieve. We assume we know what they want, but we don't because we don't ask them. Sometimes we're too busy worrying about the non chargeable work we don't even have the conversation well enough with them at the beginning. We've got to ask lots of questions about them, about their families, about their business, about their ex its strategies about what is what are they trying to achieve? And, you know, a great question is, look, take money off the table. How would you wanna work with your lawyer? What is the dream service you would like to have? And, you know, we might think that it we might think it's x y z, and they might say, no, it's a b c. That's what I want. And you think, alright. Okay. Didn't think of that, but yeah, if that's what you want. And and then we gotta say, well, you know, everybody's different. Every consumer is different. Everybody does not want the cheapest. If that was so, we'd always order the cheapest wine when we went out for dinner. We'd all be driving Korean cars and we'd all be shopping Walmart or something like that for our clothes. We don't we don't do that because value is complicated, value is different and what you value and what I value will be different. And we will then present to clients three choices. Just a bit like going to the car wash. You got your car wash menu, which one am I gonna have? Well, let's create three choices for a client. And I did this with an employment lawyer that I was working with, and the one of the rules of value based pricing is no one prices their work in isolation. Two pairs of eyes on every price. And with this particular employment lawyer, he had a client who wanted employment contracts, commercial contracts for his staff, and We gave them three options. First option is I will send you some templates with some guidance notes. You fill them out yourself, I'll check your homework. As two thousand pounds. I will do it for you in three weeks time, five thousand pounds. I will drop everything and do it for you tomorrow. Eight thousand pounds. The client shows the eight thousand pounds option. They knew they could get it cheaper because we told them, but for them, having it done the next day strategically very important to them and they were prepared to pay for it. Now you didn't think, was it a lawyer happy? Yes. I'm gonna do half my monthly target tomorrow. Happy days. Is the client happy? Yes. I'm getting my work tomorrow when I was thinking I might have to wait three weeks time. And is the the owners of the business happy? Of course, they're happy. We've made more money on that job than we would have done. Had we done it on the hourly rate? And the thing about value based pricing is, well, for the billable hour, we need calculators. For value based pricing, we need courage, and you will never get that pump fist price. We get yes, I've got that. You never get that. Unless you ask for it. And that's what I encourage Roy is to do because we got low self esteem and low confidence.

Speaker 3: 14:28

It's yes. And that's an amazing statement to make that we, lawyers, have low self esteem and low self confidence, but I think you're exactly right. Lawyers are many lawyers are so fearful of quoting fees or quoting alternative fee choices as you just put it. I would think that one of the scariest things in the world if your client is to ask how much is this gonna cost in the lawyers I don't know. It's gonna depend on how many hours it takes. And, oh my gosh, like, we don't buy anything else in the world, in our lives, on I'm not really sure what the final price is going to be, like, even like a heart surgeon tells you what the price can tell or what the price is gonna be for that. And that's just scary. Now on the learning side of that coin is lawyers who you know, the I'm sure you've heard the objections too, as I do, is, like, well, I don't really know. Like, in part this if it's litigation, if it's family law, divorce law, in part, we have to see how is the the your your wife or your husband, are they mad about this deal? Is there a lawyer or someone who's agreeable or who's obnoxious? Like these may prolong the number of hours we have to work. So So when you hear that type of objection, let's just say from a family lawyer because they're probably the ones that are most entrenched, I think, in this hourly building model except for our friend Mark of Brown that we talked about before about life. What how do you assuage their soul?

Speaker 1: 16:02

Okay. I get asked this all the time. First of all, we're gonna grab ourselves a little pebble and we're gonna drop that pebble into a pond. And then we're gonna see all these concentric circles go out. At the very center of that splash where the pebble went in is what I call Yes. Work. So if a client comes into a litigator, I was a litigator. I said, sure. And I've got a problem with my eyes through a lot of property boundary disputes. Okay? I've got a problem my neighbor over the boundary. I want you to write a letter to them. That's yes work. Can I write a letter and give a fixed price for doing that before I, you know, spend hours and hours with the car? Can I give the client a fixed price based on what I know and my experiences and all? Yes. I can. That's yes work. The next concentric circle is likely work. What is likely to happen So if even if it's starting a divorce proceedings, what is likely to happen when you send that letter or you make that have that first communication? Well, Usually, it's one of three things. You won't hear anything because you get ignored. The defendant might ring you up and be patriotic and shaft at you themselves or write a write a horrible letter. That's the second one. Well, the third one is, they'll instruct their own lawyer who will ring you up a shout at you and write a bit treatic letter. Those are so can I price for that likely work? Yeah, I can because I'm an experienced lawyer and I can give a client a fixed price for those two stages. When we get further out, we're into, I'm not sure, and then further out after that is who the hell knows. What I will say to a client on day one, when I talk about the pebble all the time, this is a situation. I can give you a fixed price for stages one and two. When we get to stage three, we'll have a better idea of what's going on, and I'll give you a fixed price then. But we don't know what's gonna happen at stage three. But what I can tell you, mister or missus client, is you will never get a bill from me. That you've not previously authorized because I will give you a price. And then I will scope out the work when we get to these individual stages because I'm an expert. And it is only law where all of a sudden we hold ourselves out as experts, but we can't give them a price.

Speaker 3: 18:25

It's great.

Speaker 1: 18:25

Yeah. Well, if we said to as I've never had an lawyer, if we say to any lawyer, Okay. If you were having an extension build at your home, two up to down extension, would you employ a building contractor and all the subcontractors would you employ them on a day rate? And you get lots of horror from gossip. No, of course, I wouldn't show them. And then they said, well, why do we expect our clients to do exactly the same? Because that's what we do with the hourly rate. And over here in the UK a number of years ago, the courts issued a practice direction, the rules that which we have to abide by. And it was you have to put in a cost budget for the whole trial within usually about four to six weeks after an action has been started. You've got to cost it out. And everyone up until they say, you can't do it. You can't do it. Once the rule once the courts made a rule that you had to do it, guess what? They found a way. And that's exactly what you can do because we don't naturally want to do it we're wedded to this billable hour because that's how it's always been. But if somebody said to you, you cannot bill by the hour anymore. You'd find a way around it. And if there's one reason to find a way around it at the moment, it's generative AI and how that's gonna impact the legal profession, because we know it already has, and it's only just got started in my view.

Speaker 4: 19:56

Yes. Hey, guys. This is Dan. If you like what you've been hearing on this podcast, not just the marketing and practice building strategies, but the philosophy of the art of living your best life parts. You should know that my son, Brian, and I, built a tribe of like minded lawyers who are living lives of their own design and creating tremendous value for the world. Within the structure of a law practice. We invite you to join us at the only membership organization for entrepreneurial lawyers that is run by two full time practicing attorneys. Check us out at great Google marketing dot com.

Speaker 3: 20:31

Now, when I come back to generative AI in just a second. Talk to me to really talk to our listeners who are trying to figure out, okay, Sean, this makes sense. Yes, less scary for the client, and I know what I'm gonna get paid. And you said, I think we have low self esteem. So what tips would you have for the thinking or the mental process of thinking about the pricing for various stages of an engagement. Okay. Because what we're you know, they should be interested in profit margins and actually make some money for their work and things like that. If you watch many of them doesn't seem like they actually are. But there is a mindset I am sure to getting to trying to get the pricing right. So walk us through some tips for that.

Speaker 1: 21:20

Okay. First of all, we gotta know what our base costs are. What are the costs of us actually doing this work? And in many law firms, the data's rubbish already because others don't put it in right. They might actually work or have a line manager who, if you come to them with a write off, will give the lawyer a very hard time for writing off time. So actually, they don't bill it. They don't book it at all, and it just looks on their time sheets that they don't do any work, but they do come in and do two hours work a day when in fact they're there for twelve hours. So we've got to get we've got to understand what our base costs are. Then what we want to do in the same way that we have gold car wash menus. What are all of the features that we can put into any service? And I'm a great fan of what's called possibility thinking where you turn the problem into a question that says, how can we possibly solve this? So I did this with a a lawyer who had worked for a big global magic circle firm. She'd gone out on her own, and she did software as a service contracts. Mind numbingly boring, apologies to anyone of your listeners who may actually do that as a living but these technical contracts for software quite boring. And I said, okay. What we're gonna do in three minutes time. We put a timer on a clock and say, what are all the features we could possibly add to this contract drafting? And we went bum. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Writing lots of answers. We then after the end of three minutes. Had fifteen or so features. And they included things like, okay, I will draft a contract for you. You will have a contract. That contract, I will update every year for you. So every year, or if there's a change in the law, you know it's up to date. I will come to your organization and sit down with all your salesman and tell them how this contract works and why they shouldn't be deleting bits of it. I will come when you sign up a client or you've got it you've got a client ready to sign. I will check that contract for you to make sure it's right. If you've got a very prestigious client, I will come to the meeting for you with that. So you see where I'm going here. We're adding lots of features to what other is otherwise a boring bit of paper. And when I did this exercise with this lawyer, She she said, how the heads in her house said, Shaun and I needed you yesterday? I said, well, I said, why what happened yesterday? She said, I agreed to do a piece of work for two thousand pounds, which is giving this guy the contract, giving a client a contract. They said, if I'd had this list, I would have get he would have bought this. He would have bought the gold option. And I said, what would you have priced it at? She said he would have paid fifteen thousand for it. And these are for features that, you know, ordinarily, we might even give away or we might not you know you know, we might not charge for. So It's just thinking what can we add to our proposition.

Speaker 3: 24:31

Not only would you likely give them away. But many of this because I've done that part. So I have a tiny part a tiny fraction of our revenue is doing consulting for physicians and highway burners who are thinking about making a disability claim under a contract. For which I am an Uber expert on this. And we did exactly the exercise. I had never met you, but we did exactly this exercise. Is what could we throw into the deal as an offering to even to enhance how the offering looks, like the contract looks. Because we know that no other lawyer in our space is even thinking about a bullet point list of everything you can get. And the reality is that hardly anybody actually asks you to fulfill on every single book point, the showing up at the meeting. In our case, we can get the Zoom meeting transcribed, edited for you, and, you know, so you have all this record, like, It's there. Nobody ever asks for it. And so for when I was charging basically six hundred dollars to do before I figured this out, I charged two thousand dollars to do. The client is really well served. They're happy. And we have two tiers because I am a younger associate. And if your problem is a smaller problem, you get to talk to him but he's getting paid three x, what he was getting paid before for the same consult because we actually sat down and did this exercise And I'll tell you exactly right because when you do this, it's a differentiator because it's very hard for anyone else to, like, Anyone can take into your own say, I'll do less I'll do less per hour. Right? Hard to anyone even knows what your features is because they're not actually seeing the contract. And then we teach the consumer who's buying the contract, hey, just ask your other lawyers who you're If we're competing with, they would ask them if they do these things, and they're not because they've never thought about that. Yeah. So you're I think that you're exactly right. And in any type of practice area. I have to imagine that if you sat down with your team for, you know, thirty minutes or forty five minutes, your team will actually come up with the ideas because they're the ones that are on the phone calls and most of the emails anyway. Of what it is, that a client in the a potential client in this position would actually like to get from the firm. And side tip, it's not all about how many hours Ben spends on it. I've built a great team that actually delivers most of what we're selling. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 27:16

Talk about

Speaker 3: 27:19

When another thing I hear sometimes is, oh gee, Sean, if I do quote, a fixed fee for a certain part of the case. And it ends up, like, sure what, though those spouse on the other side and their lawyer come to agreement really quickly. And now I've made way too much. And someone is gonna think that I have not been ethical because I just made multiple thousands of dollars per hour, and that happens in a continued feedbacks a lot, frankly. Have you seen any you get that pushback at all from lawyers who have low self confidence and low self esteem?

Speaker 1: 27:56

The the usual pushback I'll get is, sure, what do we do if we give a fix price of ten thousand pounds. And then when we do the work, it's twelve thousand. We've got twelve thousand dollar clock. And the answer to that is you suck it up you actually look at why did it end up at that? Were you keeping the client informed? Did you, you know, had you scopes it saying we're gonna do three witness statements so then you did ten witness statements without stopping work and going to the client and say, look, you remember I scoped this at three, We now need ten. I will do the other seven for you, but that's gonna cost you a bit more because lawyers will carry on working we don't wanna have that difficult conversation. We'll carry on working until the end, and then sometime we have to have the conversation and it's better to do that before you've done the work rather than you've after done rather than after you've done the work because you lose your leverage. And then the other thing I could tell you that I saw in the your trade press, it was day shots. I think is the how you pronounce it, the firm. Two thousand five hundred pounds an hour that was hit hit our legal press last week. I could tell you, I charged that per hour if you break it down in an hourly rate two and a half years ago. And that was not because I said to the client, It is two and a half thousand pounds an hour. It wasn't. It was a client rang on a Friday afternoon, at four thirty, and he needed a letter before action to go to somebody who had posted something to foundry on a community see web Facebook page. I hate me saying, Sean, I need you to do this. Now it's now the time has ticked around. I satisfied myself, we didn't have a conflict of interest. I'm at twenty for up to five. He says, I need this to go by five. Now we had done a similar letter the week before, I knew where the precedent was. I had a trainee lawyer sitting next to me that I'm making sit down because you're gonna be doing this. And I said to the client, yeah, I can do this for you. It's gonna cost you six hundred pounds plus VAT. I need to take the payment now. He said, perfect. I'll do it. Put it through to my accounts people. They took payment. I said, by the time you come back here, we'll have the draft in front of us. We're just filling it in. We did that. It came back. We've got the draft in front of this. We filled it in. So are you happy with this response? He said, yeah. Lovely. Send it. Bush. And we did that in eighteen minutes. Six hundred pounds, I charged him. So hello there. I'm two thousand four hundred pounds. So yeah. I'm two I'm sorry. I'm eighteen hundred pounds. I don't know. On that on that one. I'm eighteen hundred pounds. I think that I worked at McDonald's. I think it's just under two thousand four hundred dollars. For that if it was an hourly rate. That guy was over the moon. He still keeps in touch with me even though he knows I retired for private practice because he said, Sean, I have a problem. Who can you help me with? Who can you direct me to? Because I'm his trusted adviser. That but I never told him what the hourly rate was. If he's

Speaker 3: 31:01

yeah. Of course not.

Speaker 1: 31:02

Well, it was actually it was a fixed price.

Speaker 3: 31:05

And that's capitalism one zero one because in that deal, everybody won. He got his problem solved that he needed to solve that day you had you could have said, no, look, I'm going to play golf or something. I'm I there's no price at which I will do the work there is probably some price that would keep you off the golf course if you're a golfer. So you won. The young man who was working with you. The young lawyer there was working with you. One, because now he or she has seen something that they didn't teach in law school. Yeah. And there's no force of fraud. Look, I think that the big point that we're making here is that the client still gets to choose. Right? The client gets to choose the options And one of the options might be, no. Like, I'll go to the next lawyer, and that's fine. When you have good marketing and a good reputation and a good brand and cases are coming in, Yeah. Absolutely. I can do this. I'm gonna talk a few minutes about ditch the billable hour. You have right near the beginning of the book, you have your I thought it was a misprint first. It says your eight p point plan with a penguin in the middle of it. And so let's talk about that because you're not just about your expertise is not just well, let's just change the model to flat fee. Right? You really wanna change the way that lawyers think about their businesses.

Speaker 1: 32:25

Yeah. And, you know, I as I said at the beginning, I I I'm forever grateful to John Koch of our business school writing our iceberg is melting because the eight p point plan is based on his methodology of change management. And if you're gonna implement value based pricing in your firm, it's a change management project. It's not an email that comes out from the managing partner to the staff in a Jean Luc picard syndrome of saying make it so, you know, it's not a half day course of the partner's retreat. This is what is the project? What is the plan? And how can we do it? And so, you know, the eight Ps are for the first one is p for paradigm. It's a paradigm shift. We've got to agree we're gonna do this. This is strategic. We, as a firm, are gonna do this. Second piece, pioneers, let's get a pioneer group of penguins that are gonna be really enthusiastic about this. We don't want no no penguins in. We need our pioneer penguins, the ones who are gonna embrace this and give it a go. We're then gonna have a plan and we're gonna plan properly for this. So we have find on a vision. We're then gonna promote and communicate this across our firm. So everybody knows this is what we're doing and how we're gonna do it. We're then gonna permit people to get it wrong and try Yes. Because rulers are bad at blame. And they sometimes want heads on sticks when, oh, look what happened over there. That's the hang on. We got a create a psychologically safe area for these people to do this. This is not career limiting if you try this. If that lawyer had done the two thousand five thousand eight thousand, hadn't got any of the jobs. The client just said, well, I think I'm unhappy about your structure ongoing. That cannot be a career limiting the size because that guy was brave enough to give it a go. We then have got to look for quick wins, prizes. And celebrate those quick wins because everybody wants to everyone wants to be part of the winning team. And then like any change management project, we're gonna persevere We've gotta keep going when they're tough times. And then we're gonna have passion. That's the last p of the passion of creating this culture change. And having our people, as you described it at the very beginning, coming into work on a Monday and you know what, being happy about coming into work on a Monday because I'm a great believer in that if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. You'd love what you do. So let's just go in there and enjoy being around people that we're comfortable about being this enjoy acting for clients that are joy to act for. Let's make some money, play our golf, do whatever it is that floats our boat. But we can have happier lives out of doing that.

Speaker 3: 35:13

Around here, so I'm in practice with my son and we oftentimes reflect. We call it being able to play in the endless playground. And, you know, the picture you draw is back when you were a little kid, you didn't really have any worries, and you plan on playground, and you took risks and you got in rumbles and you skinned your knees. But then, you know, the next day, everything started again anew. Like, if you're playing sports and, you know, the whole thing ends up in a fight the next day everything starts anew. And, yeah, it's just weird, actually, Sean, that lawyers so many lawyers feel either they can't can't change don't wanna take risk, don't wanna be the pioneer, don't want people to talk about them, funny or talk about them behind their back. I don't know how you get through law school and get into their practice with that with such such low self esteem and love creativity. But I guess that's what law school builds in large part is or tracks, I think, people with not a lot of creativity. So so tell us a little bit about your own business model. You have this book. You have a group that you're you've put together. I want you to talk about that. But today, like, how do you are you speaking around the world? How do you make money? And who who are you looking for as clients?

Speaker 1: 36:30

Well, I'm I'm looking for what I call proactive lawyers. I like working with Proactive Royers. I don't wanna work with a group, but no no penguins who would be saying, oh, no, that can't be done. So I want people who've got open minds I work with people in a number of ways. I I have firms that will say come in and do this for me, Sean. I will have firms say come and do this with me. And I'll have other folks say, just tell us what to do, you know, we're doing ourselves. And the book came around because people kept saying, look, how do we do this? And I remember seeing one white paper that a AI company put together actually where they surveyed eight lawyers from around the world. Six said we hate the billable hour. One said, I quite like it, and one was a bit non plus neither way. And the six that said they hate, it said, we all hate it, but it's too difficult to do anything about it. And that was red ragged to a bull for me, I'm afraid. You know? And I just saw, look, I've studied it. I've read everything that there is to read or think about value based pricing. Although, when I heard your podcast yesterday with Marco Brown, I thought, oh, I hadn't heard that before anyway. But and you keep learning and you keep developing. And in the back of the book, I've got a hundred and twenty five point task list. If someone says, how do you do it? Well, there's your starting point. Look at the task list. That'll tell you what to do. First task on the task list is Could you buy John Carter's book, or iceberg is melting? You know, I think John Carter owes me a beer whenever I I bump into him if I ever do. But you know, I wanna work with firms. I do it also in on a web based basis, so I a great fan of technology called Remo, r e m o, you can have virtual conferences and I'm doing one of those on the twelfth of March where people come into a room of virtual conference room, and I get them on tables working together. So lawyers all over the world, all the commercial lawyers sit on table one, all the family lawyers on table two. And they will work together creating options because they will be considered all can't be done in my work area. When I guarantee you at the end, once you sat with one of my table captains in that conference, you will have come up or you will have at least heard other people. Come up with options that they can apply in their business. And the thing about lawyers is and I've had this chat with Marco Brown actually, thanks to you. Most lawyers won't do anything, and that gives you a real competitive advantage because even if people are told this is something that you should do. They might go back to what they've and do what they've always done, and they'll get what they're always got. And those lawyers who are actually prepared to do something and get themselves in gear are gonna reap the rewards. And so that's what I think is very exciting about this. I know you do.

Speaker 3: 39:23

I mean and even if more lawyers did what you and I are showing them to do and all of your competitors did this we still believe that the world is big. That there's more clients and more legal problems to solve than there are lawyers. Even though, to kind of read the popular press, you think there's way too many lawyers. From where we sit. You know, people need good smart warriors who are creative and proactive and really asking the questions that you said at the top of the podcast, which is, what does a win for you? What would be perfect for you, mister potential client? What are you really trying to achieve here? And that's a question that way too many lawyers skip over, I think. Let me ask you one last little section because a lot of firms, like, a main way to evaluate younger lawyers and their teams, their associates is number of hours you build. And so in speaking to leaders of law firms who have maybe legions of young lawyers who you know, yesterday, we're being evaluated in large form and how many hours they build. What do you say to those leaders who are like, alright, well, how are we gonna measure them?

Speaker 1: 40:33

Less, why don't we just measure them on revenue generated? Because hours build doesn't necessarily always turn into revenue anyway. It is just hours that are billed. And I've stood in front of law firm group where we had law firm CFO is a forty million pounds turnover and above up to a hundred million pounds turnover. And I said to them, I suspect that you as a firm routinely write off between ten and twenty percent of your turnover every year, and they nodded. Yes. We are writing off between ten and twenty million a year. So all this time that gets booked, that doesn't turn into fees. So it's point you know, it's pointless. It really is pointless to measure them on revenue. And, you know, I think that the billable hour is guilty of sex discrimination. Because, you know, women might be careless They might have they're they're gonna take more of the caring responsibilities, and it's harder. And I just think it is just so so wrong. And what is the point? I've I've thirty thirty six years postqualified. I've never had to work an all nighter in my life. What is all that about in the commercial picture? Why do they do that? I think that is poor time management. And I used to make it a disciplinary proceedings in my firm if a lawyer missed a child sports day or a child's nativity play, That for me was disciplinary. I had to sit through all of my kids, ones of those. Every lawyer should, you know, and that's the kind of environment we wanna make. And we but we just gotta permit, give the big peers to meet up, permit our people to act differently. Commit our people to say, this client is too difficult to deal with. We don't wanna act for them. And another thing I have in the book is something called a lawyer scoring matrix, where if you were coming to me as a lawyer, and no one prices their own work in isolation, So I had this situation with a probate lawyer, the probate XL spreadsheet, said the value of this case is six thousand pounds. And I said to her, how busy are you? She said, I'm sure, and I'm absolutely mad. Okay? Is is we're we're gonna charge more. Can you delegate it? No, I can't delegate it. I said, come on, you can delegate. This is certainly a small case. You've got the team of h. Why can't you delegate this? Should I can't delegate this probate, Sean, because I've just left three siblings in my office. They are all arguing. Over their late mother's jewelry, who gets the engagement ring, who gets the watch. They don't like each other. I'm gonna have to have three conversations every time on this probate going forward. And mom hasn't even been buried yet. She said, I can't delegate this to a junior. Right? I said, I can't accept that. I said, are you gonna enjoy dealing with these people? She said, hell no. I'm really not. This is gonna be horrible. I said, okay. I said, what price would you like to do this worker? And she said twenty four thousand pounds. I said, front, price approved. She went away, asked for twenty four thousand pounds. Next stage, she gets an email. Price agreed. How does she feel now about doing the work? She's quite happy to get it. It's And it's that kind

Speaker 3: 44:05

of thing that's really helpful.

Speaker 1: 44:06

You know, and it's that kind of thing where we create these structures and frameworks for our people and we say it's okay to play in that. But we don't have them, and that's what I wanna create, and that's what I think everybody should create.

Speaker 3: 44:19

You and I are in the same page because if we were creating a legal system in a way for clients and warriors to deal with each other. If we were creating it from scratch, like this was the assigned task, there's no way we would build what has been built over the years. All of my friends, where should people go? So so the book is dipped to billable hour, which I assume is also available on amazon dot com here in America as my referee book is apparently available on amazon dot u k. You know, I don't send physical copies there. But where should besides getting the book, should people go to find out more value, perhaps engage you, see what else you're doing?

Speaker 1: 44:54

Follow me on LinkedIn. I'm a LinkedIn junkie. I really enjoy it. I put lots of there, and that's really the best place to get there. Or if you Google big yellow penguin dot co dot u k, I will come up. And anyone, all your listeners, Ben, hardly advice you to join me in what I call the VBP colony, which you can access via my website. And it's an online community with I launched it five days ago. There's a hundred people already in it, and they're all interested in the same thing. Which is ditching the billable hour. And there's resources in there. People are exchanging ideas already. And I haven't got all the answers. And the answers will come from within. And and I want these people. I wanna start conversations. I want people to start sharing information. And, you know, I I got already a great book recommendation from somebody in there, from someone I've never met. But he looked at a YouTube clip that a tent talk that I've put up, so I think this is really good And he said, oh, you wanna see this one as well. And he thought, happy days. That's all we just keep learning. You know, let's keep learning.

Speaker 3: 46:08

Absolutely. And you ended there with a great principles that leaders do not need to know all of the answers to all of the questions. I think our job is to assemble great people and get out of the way. In some of the people who are smarter than we are and get out of the way and let them do the thing. Sean, Jerry, and thanks so much for carving out the time today. Really appreciate it. Ditch a billable hour is a great book. I did a read of the pre publication copy. It's fantastic. And congrats. I think your community is gonna grow too because there's a huge need.

Speaker 1: 46:35

And you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 3: 46:38

Alright, sir. We'll talk later.

Speaker 2: 46:39

If you like what you just heard on the Renegade lawyer podcast, you may be a perfect fit for the great legal mark community. Law firm owners across the country are becoming heroes to their families and icons in their communities. They've gone renegade by rejecting status quo, the legal profession, so they can deliver high quality legal services, coupled with top notch customer service. To clients who pay, stay and refer. Learn more at great legal marketing dot com. That's great legal marketing dot com.