Building Community
Welcome to this month's article of Let’s Be Frank, a monthly newsletter series hosted on LinkedIn and authored by our founder Digby. If you are interested in following along pop over to the Let’s Be Frank LinkedIn page here and hit the subscribe button to have these articles sent straight to your inbox.
When I decided it was time to move away from hourly billing back in March of 2020, there was no manual. I didn’t know anyone else who had made the full shift, or about their approaches to pricing. We were out there on our own, and for the next six months we worked on building our system, which we launched under the banner Frank Fee in September, 2020.
As part of this journey full of continuous learning and recalibration, I decided to share my experiences by posting monthly articles on LinkedIn. My first article came out on 27 July 2021, marking the start of me finding a worldwide community that was passionate about practicing law differently.
I have been fortunate to connect with so many individuals, who are passionate about moving away from the billable hour. One of my early connections, @jonathan stark, actually came from outside the legal industry, when I appeared on his podcast “Ditching Hourly” to talk about Frank Fee. I also connected with @John Chisholm, who had been on a personal journey to help law firms in Australia and beyond move away from the hourly model. From there, this community of like-minded thinkers has brought me together with many more people, such as @ScottSimmons, @ShaunJardine, @AlistairWells, @KariBoyle, to name a few.
In the background my sons, @ScottLeigh and @DigbyC.Leigh, were creating an app that would assist law firms in pricing without relying on hourly billing. We have met so many wonderful people along the way, who are now a part of our lives. It is for this reason, we at @AltFee, have decided to formalize this community by creating a way we can find others who are aligned in their approach, no matter their geographical location.
We want to build a home for the major stakeholders (consumers of legal services, legal professionals and law firms) to better understand the alternative fee space. A place where consumers can find law firms that provide services with fee types that work for them, where law firms can find referral options with firms who can provide a similar experience to their own firm, and where legal professionals can better understand how other firms approach pricing.
This initiative that we have been working on, and are excited to officially launch, is our Directory of Law Firms Offering Alternative Fees. The number of firms joining the directory in the first few weeks of January has been incredibly encouraging, and we are very excited to continue to grow this community.
If you provide some of your legal services using non-hourly pricing and are interested in joining the community, please click this Survey Link to join the community. The survey takes five minutes to complete, and it will get you a full listing on the directory.
As part of this initiative we are aggregating the survey results and creating a report, which we will share with those who complete the survey and join the directory. So far there have been some really intriguing findings!
Check it out here: Directory!
Thanks to all of you who have already joined.
Until next time,
