If you’ve ever hired a lawyer, you probably know the feeling. The work is done, the matter is closed, and then the bill arrives — a page of cryptic entries like “0.3 hours: telephone conference” and “1.1 hours: gather documents and begin drafting.” You add it up, wince, and wonder what half of it even means.
We don’t think it has to be that way. At L. Jennings Law, nearly all of our estate planning work is billed on a flat fee. You get one firm number, quoted before we start. Here’s how that works and why we’ve built the firm around it.
How our billing works
When you meet with us, we’ll talk through your family, your assets, and your goals. Based on that conversation, we’ll recommend a plan — whether that’s a revocable trust package, powers of attorney, a business succession plan, or something else — and we’ll quote you the full price up front.
That number covers the work. Not the work plus every phone call, every email, and every question you were afraid to ask because the meter was running. When you hire us, you know the cost before you sign. Period.
Why we don’t bill by the hour
You deserve certainty. An estate plan is something you do to bring your family peace of mind. Starting that process with an open-ended bill defeats the purpose. A flat fee means you can make a real decision with real information.
Hourly billing rewards the wrong thing. Under the traditional model, the slower a law firm works, the more it gets paid. Read that again. If a task takes one firm three hours and another firm one hour, the hourly model pays the slower firm three times as much for the same result. That’s backwards.
Flat fees reward efficiency — and you get the benefit. Our incentive is the opposite. Because the price is fixed, we’re motivated to invest in the best systems, technology, and training available so we can do excellent work efficiently. Every improvement we make benefits you, not the invoice.
You should never hesitate to call your lawyer. Under hourly billing, clients ration their questions because every call costs money. That’s a terrible way to plan an estate — the details we learn in those conversations are often the most important part of the plan. With a flat fee, the meter isn’t running. Call us.
Stewardship applies to our billing, too
We call ourselves A Good Steward Firm, and that isn’t just about how we help you manage what you’ve been entrusted with — it applies to how we run our own practice. Being a good steward of your money means telling you what something costs before you buy it, doing the work as efficiently as excellence allows, and never padding a bill.
Everyone dreads the lawyer bill at the end. Our clients don’t get one. They get the number at the beginning — and that’s the number.
