Family Law - AI / Template Billing

@Jonathan, I’d appreciate any thoughts that you can share on how you developed your firms pricing model and what the AI fee is that you mention as part of your hourly plus AI fee/ template fee per item. Thanks in advance! 

-Arnold 

***Edit--just saw that you posted while I was typing this. ***

Jonathan, thank you for this insight. We have minimum bill times listed in our retainer agreement for a variety of documents/actions but I like the idea of incorporating an AI Fee.

Sure. The lightning bolt for me was when I demo’ed Westlaw AI and it completed a legal memorandum which I had just researched for 3+ hours on a complicated topic within 15 minutes with exceptional accuracy. I asked the rep, “How does this help me, I bill on time?” She responded: “Minimum increment billing”. So we started first billing for Westlaw AI legal memos. When I do this I identify it on the line item as an AI product and I save the research to a file. If you have 5 necessary ai legal searches running simultaneously multiplied by .9 hours then everyone is ahead.

For each template item (in the list above) I considered several factors: minimum time to produce the document including conversation with staff / client without template i.e. from scratch, time actually spent, reasonable value to client, whether I could “share” the benefit of the time savings with the client, whether the market might be changing with regard to the value of the item as a “product”. For templates, the time includes not just generating the documents but inputs, review, editing, and getting it to the client. If the time goes over we bill. I am also relying heavily on Matter Intake forms to get the data in for use in templates so that these prices work.

For legal AI or Archie (in the list above), I considered the items above but I also thought about the average time spent doing each item.

We have been using these types of terms for at least a year and have had no issues with Clients although we have had some light discussion. They are all on board and have no problems.

Keep in mind that these items are minimum value billing - price may go up based on time spent. But I try to resolve pricing in favor of client value / happiness if it is at all close - bearing in mind my obligation to charge a reasonable fee.

One thing that would be extremely helpful to me from SB would be if SB would implement the “Duration” field it has on each template to post a charge for my piecemeal rate. That would make billing so much smoother.

Now that I’ve had a chance to review--Thanks for sharing this! How did you derive the individual minimum time units that you charge?

I provided this information in a longer post here but received a note that it would be reviewed by moderation before posting. Hopefully it gets released soon.

​@Sara Sultan Could you assist in cutting my follow up reply here loose from moderation?

I have released the post, Jonathan.  Apologies on the delay!

Thanks for the assist Jonathan, this is very helpful!