Dear Law Firms: This re-post is a must-read for you.

From law.com's Corporate Counsel site, Susan Hackett's piece, Ending the Holiday Tradition of Outside Counsel Rate-Increase Letters (here) is a must-read.

The most important take-aways:

1. Law is a service industry run by professionals who should understand what matters to their clients.  
2. Just because you would love a rate increase doesn't mean that you have justified one.
3. If lawyers and their clients can come up with ways of agreeing on fair compensation that doesn't revolve around hourly rates, everyone will (eventually) come out ahead.

Let's face it--hourly billing creates awful incentives, and law firms need to come up with something between the old "bottom line:  services rendered, $X" tradition and the current "piecework" way of billing.

There are a lot of smart people out there--both lawyers and clients--and I know that our profession will figure it out.  Sooner, though, is better than later.  The times aren't a'changin'--they've changed.