Lack of transparency and information

According to the Law Society’s Gazette of 23 September, research conducted by the London Committee of the Law Society’s Commerce and Industry Group reveals that in house counsel are dissatisfied with the manner of billing of law firms. The law firms they instructed did not readily volunteer hourly rates for all levels of seniority, information about their attitude to fixed and capped fee arrangements, or their policies on charging for travel time or internal disbursements. One complaint was that legal fees doubled when a firm increased its unit of time to 15 minutes and then rounded up the time spent to this figure. More description on bills and the quality of the narrative was crucial; a bill might say that 30 telephone calls were made without explaining what was achieved by this. All of this resulted in boardroom pressure to justify why a company stayed with a particular law firm.