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Do your solicitors cost £1,000 per hour?

I’m not surprised there has been considerable publicity today about Jim Diamond’s report, The Price of Law.  The headlines have been dominated by the report’s claim that hourly rates for a partner at top London firms now exceed £1,000 per hour.  The author also points out that price transparency simply does not exist because average hourly rates for law firms are not published.

This report has struck a chord with me.  We don’t often blow our own trumpet, but when I set up Ortolan Legal more than 6 years ago, our founding principle was to offer highly competitive and transparent pricing allied with high quality.  No law firm needs to charge more than is necessary to make a fair profit.  So we eliminated overheads to leave only those that are essential to run a competent law firm.  We also decided that all our solicitors would be senior and experienced (our solicitors’ average experience is nearly 15 years) so our clients get partner level support at all times.  We’re proud to have some leading UK businesses amongst our clients.

I’m not shy about what we charge.  We don’t believe the hourly rate is always the best charging structure for our clients, but it is the best comparator with other firms.  Our rate is £150 per hour.  It doesn’t vary from solicitor to solicitor and when we agreed fixed or capped fees, the equivalent hourly rate is often lower than this.  All of our clients get itemised bills showing exactly how the time they are paying for has been spent.  They don’t have to ask for this.

I’ll be interested to see how many other firms are prepared to be this candid.

Nick Benson

Posted on 02/06/2016 by Ortolan

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  • Nick Benson Nick Benson I qualified as a commercial and corporate solicitor…
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