Summary
When determining pricing and scope for legal services, it is essential to understand what success looks like for the client by asking relevant questions, tailoring the approach to their needs, and being patient in the pricing and scoping process. As your experience and understanding develop over time, you will see better outcomes for both the client and the lawyer as a result.
Key Takeaway from this Video
- Understanding client success: It is crucial to ask the right questions and gain a comprehensive understanding of what success means to the client in order to tailor the pricing and scope of legal services accordingly.
- Patience in pricing and scoping: Rather than rushing to provide a price, it is beneficial to be patient and gather relevant information about the project or transaction. Taking the time to properly assess the situation allows for more accurate pricing and scoping, minimizing the risk of working for free and building trust with clients.
- Experience and continuous improvement: Pricing and scoping become more refined with experience. By engaging in more client interactions and learning from previous engagements, lawyers become better at identifying the appropriate moments to price and scope projects, ultimately leading to improved outcomes and client satisfaction.
Transcript
0:07 So first thing to think about is this is all about what is successful look like for the client because you can't guess what success looks like.
0:17 Take an example of a simple incorporation goal. I'm just going to incorporate a company, but everybody looks at that slightly differently.
0:24 You might have four shareholders and maybe complex and they may have relationships among themselves, the one person incorporating may want a robust share structure.
0:35 So nothing is ever as straightforward as you might think it is leading into it. So really key is to ask enough questions to understand what success looks like for the client.
0:45 Like do they like a lot of communication? Do they just want to get to the point? You know, and that will really tell you a lot about what scope should look like and what you need to do.
0:55 So one of the things is that everybody, especially lawyers like to know, when do I give the person the price and the answer is there is no answer.
1:05 It depends every time. It can be very quickly. It can be done in that first conversation. It never should be.
1:12 I'm thinking of selling a house. How much is that going to cost? That's that's not the time. But it may be after you had a conversation about where are you moving?
1:21 What does it look like? What's important to you? Or what are you worried about that you could do that quite quickly or in a very complex transaction you might even unbundle a phase of it, like do a planning phase first at a fixed price that is modestly priced.
1:38 So that you get a really good idea of what the relationship is going to look like.
1:42 What success really looks like. And you might really end up pricing that complex project weeks later. And sometimes that can feel risky.
1:52 But the benefit you'll get by pricing it properly far outweighs any risk of doing work for free. Experiences is really helpful.
2:01 And so you get better and better at it. The more you do you get more patient and you learn when the moment is to price and scope.
2:11 And you probably get more patient and you care less about pricing right away because you learn after a while that the truth is if you spend that time you're not going to lose good work.
2:23 Clients are going to trust you. They're all in. They've invested in the relationship as well. And not with risk.
2:29 And so you learn to be more patient the more you do it. And so the only way to get there is really through experience and through taking that first step.