Why you need this policy:
Attorneys have every right—and need—to be paid. But getting clients to pay their bills on time is a major challenge that forces you to confront a bewildering array of fee arrangements, billing of non-fee expenses, and ethical constraints stemming from the attorney-client relationship.
How this policy helps you:
The centerpiece of juggling all of these requirements is to establish a policy that tells clients how they will be billed for the services they receive. In addition to laying the legal ground work for billing and collection, a well-crafted billing policy plays a key role in providing effective communications with clients and preventing misunderstandings that can fester into nasty payment disputes.
How to use this policy:
This Model Policy is based not on any single example but a “greatest hits”-type of amalgamation of best practices from actual policies used by law firms across the U.S. Of course, no two practices do all things the same exact way. So you’ll need to modify the Policy—particularly the provisions regarding the different kinds of fee arrangements—to your own circumstances, e.g., by deleting the section on contingency fees if your attorneys don’t enter into contingency fee arrangements.