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Now, the next thing is how the firms pay the clients, which I've covered a lot so far, but you can see here that work done in billable hours.

So the highest at the highest ranked firms, they typically almost all the work is done on the billable hour. They certainly will do an occasional class action or something, but, and same thing with four firms, but almost all the work in those firms is done by the billable hour because they can make a lot more money doing things that way.

And, and then when you get into one and two firms, a lot of those firms are doing fixed prices for different types of work they're doing, they're doing ency work and that sort of thing. Uh, and then flat fee, same thing here you can can see here that is very rare that your 3, 4, 5 firms will do things on a flat fee basis.

So your ranked two firms also, if they're doing bill hour work, prefer to do things that way. And then they certainly rank five firms will certainly do, and four firms occasionally, but they work, but it's just the likelihood. And then this is the same thing with contingency work. You can see here that your one firms [00:01:00] are that most of the litigation they do is contingency and that same thing with two firms and then, and that as well.

So that's another factor. And then this is, of course the billable hourly rate, the bill will hour rates at the buy firms are often just completely ludicrous and then they seem like a unbelievable, this is actually the material. This is very interesting. And I'm gonna just real briefly. I wanna, hopefully you guys can see this.

I'm gonna share a chart because I don't think, and you can see the URL up here, but this is really what this webinar is based on. And here you can see the, well, actually, I guess you can't see the chart either. So gimme one second. There's no chart. Hold a second. Okay. So let. All right. So this is basically, we're talking now about how law firms, bill the firm.

So this is where the chart should have been. I will review and put up the PowerPoint in a, in the chat before the end of this so everyone can see it. And I apologize that the PowerPoint wasn't working on your end, but these are the rankings for [00:02:00] the different types of work. So you have the, the highest for plaintiffs.

And then the lowest obviously is for plaintiff's work. The highest rank firms are doing plaintiff's work. You have the hour detailed hourly bills. So meaning that the firms are sending very detailed bill in terms of the type of work that they're doing. So you can see care. Another rank five firms will often just send statements of work, meaning that they'll ask for the billing that's been done.

To estimate how firm ranking might influence your own compensation, use the 2025 Legal Salary Calculator.

And, and that's how that works.

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About BCG Attorney Search

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To read more career and life advice articles visit Harrison's personal blog.


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