How to make Fixed Fees work for your legal practice
The expansion of fixed fees beyond low value personal injury has long been a contentious topic amongst practitioners, particularly those representing claimants. In the September 2021 government response to the extending fixed recoverable costs in civil cases, the government confirmed its intention to extend fixed recoverable costs to all fast track claims up to a value of £25,000 in the county court and for the majority of claims with a value between £25,000 - £100,000. In addition, a consultation opened in January 2022 to consult on extending fixed recoverable costs to clinical negligence claims with a value up to £25,000.
Fixed fees are certainly nothing new to the legal profession. In a post Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) world firms adapted to extended fixed fees in personal injury work up to £25,000 and we saw how firms could use to drive innovation and ultimately succeed in this area of law.
So, what lessons can be learned from LASPO and how can we apply them now? Below are the key areas to be considering.
Streamline your legal workflow
Whilst each case will have its own facts and merits, many of the procedural steps will remain the same. Is there potential in your workflows to automate some of those tasks? Case management software can facilitate the automation of the procedural steps in your workflows, for example diarising reminders, adding diary appointments and producing document bundles.
Automate client updates
Consider how long you spend responding to update requests from your clients. Do you often find yourself being interrupted by calls and e-mails from clients asking for routine updates when you are working on other tasks? Many of these routine updates could be automated using a client portal. Client portals can use data from your case management system to publish routine updates to clients so they can easily see an update on their case without the need to contact you.
Analyse historic cases
In order to work on fixed fee cases and remain profitable, firms will need to look at where they can make their work more efficient without sacrificing quality of legal advice or client service. You may find insights into this by looking at your historic cases and identifying areas where the highest costs were incurred to see if those stages could be streamlined.
Apply budgeting principles
The majority of multi-track claims have been subject to costs management since 2013. These principles could also apply to fixed fee work. One way to approach this could be to treat the fixed fee like it is a budget. You could break a case down into milestones and allocate a portion of the fixed fee to each milestone as a budget. Case management software can then be used to monitor the cost incurred within each milestone so you can easily keep track of how much your firm is spending at each stage of the case.
Gain insight into your legal practice
Your case and practice management systems hold a vast amount of information which when analysed could provide valuable insights into your practice, highlighting areas which you may want to focus on.
Access Workspace for Legal contains powerful apps and analytics allowing you to quickly see the information important to you and drill down further into those areas which require your focus.
