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I love how lawyers didn't want to push above $990 in a recession because, you know, $1,000 is so much more than $990. It's like real estate agents listing a house for $995,000 instead of $1,000,000: because it "sounds" cheaper. I'm sure those guys are really worth it though

MrPapagiorgio wrote:I love how lawyers didn't want to push above $990 in a recession because, you know, $1,000 is so much more than $990. It's like real estate agents listing a house for $995,000 instead of $1,000,000: because it "sounds" cheaper. I'm sure those guys are really worth it though

Sure, but it's actually a very well documented phenomenon in psychology and behavioral finance that you do actually disproportionately perceive it as cheaper.

MrPapagiorgio wrote:I love how lawyers didn't want to push above $990 in a recession because, you know, $1,000 is so much more than $990. It's like real estate agents listing a house for $995,000 instead of $1,000,000: because it "sounds" cheaper. I'm sure those guys are really worth it though

Are you suggesting that they're not worth it if they're an attorney that needs to deceptively create a discount, or are you suggesting that those fees are far more than an attorney should be charging for his/her services?

If you're saying the latter, they may be absolutely worth it if you're dealing with bet-the-company litigation with potential damages in the billions of dollars (for example, this decision from yesterday: http://www.law.com/jsp/cc/PubArticleCC. ... bbott_Labs). Even in the corporate setting, Marty Lipton could (if WLRK changed their billing structure) charge $5k an hour constructing a pill for your company and his services would be worth every penny.

I know from doing billing as a LA, that some partners bill a lot more than $1,000 an hour for certain projects. The billing at big firms is ridiculous. As a LA, I was billing at $300 an hour.

The corresponding spreadsheet is interesting because it shows where and in which practice area the lawyers work:

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/ ... 10223.html