{"id":4506,"date":"2003-07-14T23:44:39","date_gmt":"2003-07-15T03:44:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/formerlyknownas\/2003\/07\/14\/improving-lawyer-fee-and-reta"},"modified":"2011-08-05T15:00:51","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T19:00:51","slug":"improving-lawyer-fee-and-retainer-agreements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2003\/07\/14\/improving-lawyer-fee-and-retainer-agreements\/","title":{"rendered":"Improving Lawyer Fee and Retainer Agreements"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name=\"a109\"><\/a><span style=\"font-family: Arial;color: #000000\"><em><strong>T<\/strong><\/em>he <em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.abanet.org\/lpm\/lpt\/articles\/fin0710031.html\">Law Practice Today<\/a><\/strong><\/em> blog, which is sponsored by the ABA Committee on Law Practice Management,\u00a0has a new and useful posting entitled <\/span><em><span style=\"font-family: Arial\">Build a Better Fee Agreement<\/span><\/em><span style=\"font-family: Arial\">,<em> <\/em>by David Bilinsky and Reid Trautz (posted 7\/10\/03). The tips are excerpted from the April 2003 edition of <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.abanet.org\/lpm\/magazine\/articles\/v29is3an2.shtml\">Law Practice Magazine<\/a>. <\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial\">The article states, with brief explanations, that a comprehensive written fee agreement between lawyer and client should do the following:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul><span style=\"font-family: Arial\"><\/p>\n<li>Define the <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">scope<\/span> of your services.<\/li>\n<li>Define the <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">timing<\/span> of your services.<\/li>\n<li>Explain the <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">fee arrangement<\/span>.<\/li>\n<li>State <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">examples<\/span> of the services to be billed to the client.<\/li>\n<li>Explain the client&#8217;s obligation for <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">costs<\/span>.<\/li>\n<li>Explain your <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">billing<\/span> practices.<\/li>\n<li>Allow your client time to <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">question<\/span> your bill.<\/li>\n<li>Consider a fee <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">arbitration<\/span> provision.<\/li>\n<p><\/span><\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial;color: #000000\">If you want to go further to create a thorough and <strong>balanced<\/strong> fee\/retainer agreement, <\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial\">I suggest clicking <\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial;color: #000000\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.halt.org\/lic\/pdf\/Model_Attorney_Client.pdf\">here<\/a> and downloading the <\/span><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial\">Model Client-Attorney Agreement <\/span><\/strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial\">created in 2000 by HALT. As explained in the preface to the document (which includes model sections for agreements using hourly, contingent or flat fee arrangements), the contract was:<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial\"> <\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial\">[D]esigned to secure the rights and stipulate the responsibilities of both the attorney and client.\u00a0\u00a0 It is also meant to serve as a <strong>discussion document<\/strong> by which the client may learn enough about a particular attorney&#8217;s business practices to make an <strong>informed choice<\/strong> as a consumer of legal services. <\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-family: Arial\">Use of the following contract (or a modified version of it) is, of course, a decision to be made entirely by the client and attorney.\u00a0\u00a0However, HALT&#8217;s research has shown that most disputes between clients and attorneys could have been avoided if the nature of their relationship had been made explicit at the outset.\u00a0 If your attorney refuses to sign or draft a document such as this, ask why. The answers will tell you whether or not the attorney is <strong>the sort you want to employ<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial\">It might also help the lawyer decide what sort of attorney he or she wants to be. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Law Practice Today blog, which is sponsored by the ABA Committee on Law Practice Management,\u00a0has a new and useful posting entitled Build a Better Fee Agreement, by David Bilinsky and Reid Trautz (posted 7\/10\/03). The tips are excerpted from the April 2003 edition of Law Practice Magazine. The article states, with brief explanations, that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3513],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lawyer-news-or-ethics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kP1R-1aG","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4506"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14240,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4506\/revisions\/14240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}