In the first part of our report , we addressed the issue of the accessibility of your expertise for the French.
Although it is about protecting their interests, it is sometimes difficult to take the step of your office, very often due to the cost of a consultation.
If communication is essential, it is just as important to rethink your price list (without necessarily revising your prices, we will come back to this) in order to reach a wider population.
How to rethink your fees in order to develop your clientele effectively?
Several strategies can be considered.
Here are some steps you can take to help you.
First, do not be tempted by the strategy of “ lowest possible fees to attract more clients”.
This strategy, while surely profitable in the short term, is not really one in the long term.
Establishing a price list must be based on several things:
- Your expertise in a field of intervention: a specialized lawyer will have a higher hourly rate than a young lawyer without specialization for example.
- La population that you wish to aim for: to correlate with the field of intervention in which you operate: a dispute in international law necessarily implies a higher hourly rate than a dispute in family law.
- Le time that you will spend on each affair and which will define
the actual cost of the service. - Your charges at the end of the month: like any liberal profession, your charges generally represent 50% of what you receive. Your clients may not know it, but they directly influence the setting of your hourly rate.
So many things that need to be factored into your pricing strategy and that you shouldn't overlook.
What role do you give to each of these points in establishing your price list?
A senior lawyer can – and must – grant more points to his expertise, for example, and will take less into account his social charges because they will be quickly amortized by his advanced expertise.
A young lawyer, on the contrary, will always keep in mind the charges he will have to pay at the end of the month because they largely determine his remuneration.
Effective communication about your fees: the key to success
Once this question is resolved, you can concentrate on the most important part of the fees: knowing how to communicate them to your potential clients.
Because we must not deceive ourselves: a client who accepts your fees without complaint is a client who understands how they work.
Basing your calculations on your hourly rate and dissecting it to arrive at a more trustworthy figure when your work hasn't taken you an hour is a good thing, but do you communicate about this possibility?
Therein lies the problem: what is normal for you is not necessarily normal for the litigant.
If he thinks that he will be charged €200 in any case for a 20-minute appointment with a lawyer where he will only get quick advice on a procedure, he will not be reassured.
Who would be in his place?
To make things more concrete, let's take the case of Maître Anthony Joheir , a lawyer at the Marseille bar specializing in criminal law and personal injury law, who agreed to answer our questions:
“I always offer a free initial consultation.
This consultation is decisive because it allows an initial legal analysis of the file and to determine the financial conditions of my intervention. After the consultation, I draw up a very detailed fee agreement which I send to the client. If the latter wishes my intervention, we set a second meeting to sign the agreement and the payment of the agreed fees.
The client thus has a period of reflection between these two meetings before committing to me.”
A very detailed fee agreement is what your potential client expects at the end of a first meeting before deciding to commit to you.
This is the whole point of the communication work around your fees: to make it clear that the hourly rate is not fixed , but also that the famous "flat fee" which means everything and nothing at the same time does mean something.
Try as much as possible to put numbers behind the terms you use to talk about your fees.
Your clients will then better understand what awaits them after a consultation and will not come to your office with a lump in their stomach.
If this is the case, it will be for reasons other than your fees.
Where should I highlight my price list?
Do you have a website?
This might be a good place to talk about it.
If your potential client is looking for information about you in particular, they are likely to visit your firm's website.
Write an article where you explain your fees and what they represent, this will help to build confidence.
If you are present on a networking site , it may also be worthwhile to try to mention it as soon as a potential client contacts you.
This is very important, particularly if you are a young lawyer who does not yet have a well-established clientele.
Allowing you to make yourself known to a greater number of people, being present on a networking platform is very often beneficial for the development of your clientele.
Regarding fees and your way of highlighting them on a networking platform, you can indicate to your potential client that the hourly rate that you highlight on your profile is only indicative and that you you obviously adapt to the problem you are going to face.
Simple and effective, this precision can reassure him
Do you have your own way of promoting your fees?
If so, does it work? Do not hesitate to give us your feedback.
This is a very important subject and practices differ from one lawyer to another.
Sharing allows you to know how you position yourself in relation to your colleagues.
In the third and final part of our report , we will address the issue of unpaid fees, a crucial concern for many of you. How can you minimize these and ensure your client pays voluntarily without reminders or referral to the Bar Association? This is the question we will attempt to answer.
Do not hesitate to comment on this article to tell us where you are in your thinking about your fees.