Does a lawyer have any motivation to complete the case work as soon as possible if he/she will be paid more to work longer on the case? Yes, a truly professional and ethical one and not every lawyer may be mindful of not billing higher than necessary. But why should lawyers put themselves in a position where they are vulnerable to such moral qualms and ethical dilemmas? What is the value of hourly billing anyway? Is it just an objective criterion for measuring the efforts of a professional? Does it constitute a useful metric for quantifying the value a lawyer contributes? In other words: Does it measure what matters?
A lawyer’s value contribution is based on his knowledge, experience, expertise, intuition, creativity. An experienced lawyer could have the solution or some preliminary version of it even within the first couple of minutes of his/her conversation with a client. Call it a hunch, intuition or second nature. With experience, this should happen even quicker which would mean even less billable hours. As a result and rather counterintuitively, a more experienced and skilful lawyer would have to bill less if he/she can propose a solution to the client’s problem quicker. But would that be fair and equitable? Should a lawyer then be paid on the basis of the amount of time he/she spends on a case or on the value he/she brings to the case?