Best alternatives to time billing...

Federal Court of Australia in effect puts stamp of approval on care skill/time costing amalgam...

Friends of KMS will be aware of my long-held view that logically there should be no reason why skill care considerations cannot be applied to time costing where the Client Services Agreement allows.

I have considered it fairly easy to justify as "fair and reasonable" when it is appropriate.

Many KMS client firms have Care Skill provisions in their costs agreements...


Many lawyers who charge on time do not add skill care considerations in working out a final "fair and reasonable" charge for the value of the work done.

Many lawyers are under the misapprehension that their hourly rate covers all...and effectively prohibits skill care being applied...even if your Client Services Agreement provides for it...

The Federal Court is, to say the least, an important court in Australia.

Its new scale of costs applying from 1 August 2011 has within the very first Item...Item 1, a provision for charging up to $55/six minute unit, plus additional skill care where appropriate.

Law Graduates or Articled Clerks are at $20, and Clerks or Paralegals $10...per six minute unit...that is up to those levels...

Note that not everything in the new scale is based on time...some items are still based on number of words!!

Importantly also, the scale refers to "researching a legal question of some complexity"...I daily see team members in law firms consigning "Research" to the FirmTime bucket, rather than recording it to the client file...unless it is a purely procedural matter it is legitimate to throw into the pool of time-costed work for ultimate assessment within the final "fair and reasonable" figure...

Nothing herein should be read as meaning that I feel that time-costing is the best approach...I don't.

Other posts in this blog make that very clear...