Alt. Billing is Part of Fundamental Shift in Buying Trends, Corp. Counsel and Partners Say

The topic of alternative billing keeps coming up as the antidote to the oft-vilified billable hour. But when we’ve tried to pin down law firm leaders and chief legal officers to ask them if they’re using alternative billing and how, we get silence or lots of excuses and finger pointing to explain why they aren’t opting for billable hour alternatives.

This made us wonder who is actually using alternative billing. For those who are using it, how’s it working out? For those who aren’t, why not?

ABA Journal reporters Stephanie Francis Ward and Rachel Zahorsky moderated an hour long audio chat on April 5 between chief legal officers and top law firm leaders:

Listen to the Podcast

In This Podcast:

Stephanie Francis Ward and Rachel M. Zahorsky
Mark Chandler is senior vice president, general counsel and secretary of Cisco Systems, where he manages a 250-member team of professionals. Prior to Cisco, Mark was general counsel of StrataCom Inc. and served as vice president of corporate development and general counsel of Maxtor Corp., a manufacturer of computer data storage devices.

Patrick Daugherty, a partner of Foley & Lardner, is a deal-making lawyer and Securities and Exchange Commission expert with 30 years of experience. He leads multi-office, multidisciplinary teams of professionals and counsels C-level executives, boards, committees and other fiduciaries.

Buckmaster (Buck) de Wolf is a litigation and legal policy senior counsel for the General Electric Co. who oversees intellectual property litigation for the company. Prior to GE, Buck was a partner in the San Francisco office of Howrey, Simon, Arnold & White.

Emery K. Harlan is a partner and employment group co-chair at Gonzalez Saggio & Harlan. He’s also co-founder and current board chair of the National Association of Minority and Women Owned Law Firms (NAMWOLF), which focuses on increasing the usage of minority and women-owned law firms by U.S. corporations.

Horvitz & Levy partner Mary-Christine “M.C.” Sungaila is an appellate litigator whose work focuses on cutting-edge complex tort cases.

A partner at Shook Hardy & Bacon, Paul Williams focuses his practice on products liability, tort and negligence cases. Paul has extensive experience in complex products liability litigation and has received national recognition for his innovative use of alternative billing arrangements.