Inflation. Can anyone remember what that looks like? We have been living with historically ultra-low inflation for what seems like forever. We must go back to 1980 to see anything like what is currently being experienced in the US with…

Inspired by lyrics from the musical Les Miserables (Master of The House), Richard Burcher, legal pricing expert from Validatum discusses the common practice of charging for disbursements or extras on top of a bill. For many years it has been…

There are few communications from a corporate client that are more guaranteed to send an icy chill through the veins of most partners unless of course it is accompanied by a postscript, “… and if you don’t, we’ll be going…

In an article first published on Validatum, legal pricing expert Richard Burcher discusses the concept of profitability and considers who the responsibility falls to. Legal PR firm, Byfield Consultancy, has just published a report in association with London Business School,…

In the last instalment of his series on trust in pricing, Richard Burcher looks at common things clients do which erodes the trust between them and a law firm. In part one, Richard Burcher suggested that one of the single…

In part two of this three-part blog series, Richard Burcher highlights some of the key things that law firms are guilty of doing which damages trust between them and clients. In the first part, Richard suggested that one of the…

In part one of this three-part blog series, Richard Burcher shares his observations on what firms and their clients are currently doing to damage the relationship and destroy trust when it comes to legal pricing. A major law firm recently…

Validatum kicks off its 2021 blog series with a fresh new format, but an all too familiar problem… What follows will for many of you, be the tortured reality of day-to-day legal practice. In the course of strategising a solution…

Unfortunately, we still see many firms approach to this limited to not much more than a standard letter that begins “Dear client, we hope you are well. As you know, inflation last year was 2.7%…” Notwithstanding the latest lockdown, we…

There is a quite extraordinary paradox at play here. On the one hand you would expect many lawyers, particularly those that are long in the tooth, to be quite pessimistic, negative and cynical with a hardwired expectation that most things…