Playbook, law firm
What a law firm can say about cost before anybody is a client
Cost is the first thing a prospective client wants to know and the last thing most firms put in writing, which is why so many enquiries end at the fee question. The useful part is that almost everything a firm charges on is publishable: the grades, the ranges, the funding routes, what sits outside the fee. What cannot be published is the one number the visitor came for, and the reply has to give the first without pretending to give the second.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for pricing questions holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- In most trades a price is a fact about the product, but here the published figure is a rate per hour of a particular fee earner's time, so it says nothing about what a matter will come to.
- No firm can put a figure on a piece of work before a conflict check has been run and somebody has scoped it, which makes every honest fee answer a two part answer.
- Conditional fee arrangements are the most misread thing a firm publishes, because clients hear no win no fee as no cost at all and then meet disbursements, court fees and an insurance premium.
- Which funding route applies (private, legal aid, insurance backed, union or employer funded) is a fact about the client rather than about the firm, so the assistant can list the routes and cannot pick one.
How it arrives
- what is your hourly rate
- do you do no win no fee for personal injury
- is there a fixed fee for a will
- do you charge vat on top of your fees
- what are disbursements
- do you take legal aid for family work
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Hourly rates by fee earner grade | The bands you actually bill at, partner through to paralegal, and which grade normally handles which kind of work. Publishing the grade alongside the rate is what stops a visitor reading the partner rate as the price of a straightforward matter. |
|---|---|
| Fixed fee ranges by matter type | The ranges, and the assumptions each range rests on: an uncontested position, a single property, no foreign element, standard documents. The assumptions are the material, because a fixed fee quoted without them becomes an argument the first time a matter is not standard. |
| Your conditional fee arrangement terms in plain words | Which claim types you offer it on, how the success fee works and what it is capped at, and every item that remains payable regardless: disbursements, experts, court fees, and any insurance premium. Index the honest version and the assistant repeats the honest version. |
| What sits outside every fee | Search fees, court fees, expert reports, agents' fees, and sales tax where it applies to your work. On transactional matters these are frequently larger than the firm's own charge, and a visitor who meets them for the first time on a bill treats it as a surprise. |
The reply
How we charge depends on the type of work. Wills and probate are quoted as fixed fees within the published ranges, and employment and commercial work is charged by the hour at a rate that varies with the grade of the fee earner handling it. Court fees, search fees and any expert's report sit outside that and are listed separately. A figure for your own matter comes after a conflict check and a short scoping call, and I can take your details for one.
It answers the structural question fully, because that part is a fact about the firm and refusing it just loses the enquiry. It separates the firm's charge from third party costs in the same breath, which is where fee complaints usually start. Then it names the two steps that stand between the visitor and a real number, so the offer of a call reads as the next stage rather than a deflection.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor stops asking how the firm charges and asks what theirs will cost, or starts describing the matter in order to get a number out of the assistant.
I can give you our published rates and fixed fee ranges, but not a figure for your own matter, because that needs a conflict check and a scoping call first. Leave your name, email and the type of work and a solicitor will come back to you with an estimate.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say that no win no fee means the client will pay nothing whatever happens.
- Never turn a described matter into a total, even hedged as a rough range.
- Never present an hourly rate as though it were the cost of the work.
- Never say the firm can take the matter on, before a conflict check has been run.
Questions
- Should we publish hourly rates at all?
- Firms that publish them field fewer wasted calls than firms that do not, because the enquiries that end at the rate were going to end there anyway. The thing to publish alongside is the grade, so the number is read as the cost of an hour of a particular person rather than as the cost of the matter.
- Visitors ask about no win no fee constantly. Can it handle that?
- It can, and it is one of the strongest reasons to index the terms carefully. The whole risk is that the assistant reproduces the popular understanding rather than yours, and it will not do that if the material it has spells out what remains payable and on which claim types the arrangement is offered.
- What if somebody just wants a ballpark?
- Give the published range and say plainly that the range assumes a standard matter. What must not happen is the assistant narrowing the range because of something the visitor said about their own circumstances, because at that point it has scoped a matter it has no business scoping.
Keep reading
- Everything for a law firmFee structures, consultation terms and onboarding checks are answerable. Anything applied to a caller's own facts is legal advice.
- Handling pricing questions in generalPublished price versus the price for this buyer. Bands, ranges and from pricing, and why a firm number for unscoped work is the damaging failure.
- Costs estimates, and why one cannot begin in a chat windowA costs estimate is a document with duties attached, not a number. What the assistant explains about how one is produced, and where it stops.
- The first appointment at a law firm, explained in advanceIdentification, source of funds, whether the first meeting is chargeable and what actually happens in it, answered before anybody has to ring.
- Routing a complaint into the firm's own procedure, quicklyA published complaints route, the response period attached to it and the ombudsman step, handed over without the assistant defending the firm.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.