Dan Hull introduced me to Pat Lamb in Chicago a little over a year ago.  Pat’s a big, gregarious, funny guy.  He’s no dud, but the kind of guy you immediately want to have a beer with.  Then again, nobody is a dud when Dan Hull is around, sharing stories of his days as a confidant of Jimmy Page and the inspiration for Stairway to Heaven, before the tragic kiln explosion.

Pat’s become something of a preacher to civil litigators (you know litigators, the people who hope to become trial lawyers when they grow up) on the death of the billable hour.  Pat has now written a book about it, Fee Arrangements: Value Fees and the Changing Legal Market.

The idea of civil litigators using what are bizarrely called “alternative fees” is novel and shocking in a world where tenths of an hour are life and death.  Having sat through a few of Pat’s sermons at the Church of Value Billing, I’ve seen the heads of lawyers shake and shimmy as the soothing words flowed.

No, no, it can never be.

My God, it will change everything.

How will we ever survive?

He’s talking about civil lawyers doing what criminal lawyers have done forever. Granted, he talks as if he’s invented the concept, but then, the idea of losing hourly billing is so fundamentally radical amongst the civil crowd that he might as well have.  You can bet your bottom dollar that they wouldn’t pay the slightest attention to what lawyers in any other niche have been doing forever.  We’re the Saxons to their Anglos.  Maybe even the Visigoths.

What’s this all about?  It’s about charging by the case.  It’s about our dearest friend, fixed fees.  Of course, Pat also talks about value billing, where the lawyers earn more, or less, because they have met the particular needs and criteria of their client.  While we’re not allowed to play that game, it’s still a concept that we’ve used forever, caring about our clients’ concerns and doing whatever we must to meet them.

The traditional method of hourly billing encourages lawyers to spend time.  That’s what they are paid for, time.  Take forever to bring a case to resolution?  Time. Research and write in depth memos on every issue that could conceivably arise?  Time.  As long as one can arguably justify why it’s worth wasting, time is spent. More time?  More money.  Longer case? More money.  Unlike our clients, their well doesn’t run dry as long as they send in bills that satisfy the rigorous demands of grocery clerks.

Think of Pat Lamb as the missing link (having nothing whatsoever to do with physical appearance.  I swear.)  between civil litigators and real criminal defense lawyers.  Eventually, they will figure out that we’ve known what we were doing all along, and that their disdain for our rough and tumble world, guided solely by what worked rather than what our forefathers did, is misplaced, With Pat Lamb’s guidance, they’ll eventually figure it out.

And if you ever get the chance to hang out with Pat, or Dan Hull for that matter, don’t pass it up.  Just don’t let Dan show you his “scar”.