Creative Alternatives
Fee Philosophy
At Berlandi Nussbaum & Reitzas, we know that few things irk a client as much as an expansive memo from his lawyer exploring some obscure corner of law that is unlikely to ever impact the client’s practical business goals. Worse is hesitating before calling your lawyer out of fear that your simple question will yield a 30-minute phone call at $500 an hour, half of which could be spent enduring the play-by-play of his daughter’s game-winning goal in the previous weekend’s soccer game. We know, we know.
We never want one of our clients to hesitate before calling us because they don’t want to get the clock started. If you have a question, we want to know about it before it becomes a problem. It’s best for both of us. Because at BNR, we share your desire for efficiency. We share your practical approach to getting business done. We respect the importance of predictability in legal fees so they can be budgeted accurately. In short, we want our interests to align with those of our clients, and we prove our sincerity in this regard by replacing the inefficient, unpredictable hourly fee structure with alternatives that improve the way clients pay for legal services.
Here are some of the creative alternatives we offer, but if something we haven’t thought of would work better for your business and is fair to us, please let us know about it.
Flat fees
We offer flat-fee alternatives whenever possible, including real estate transactions, mergers & acquisitions, banking transactions (including mortgage finance), trusts & estates, and more.
By working on a flat fee, you know from the start what your legal fees will be and so can properly budget for it. Plus, our firm is rewarded for efficiency, not over-lawyering. And when you have a question, you can pick up the phone and call us without worrying about the added cost. Both of us on the same side of the table, the way it ought to be.
Outsourced General Counsel
One of the more creative ways that BNR reduces inefficiency and promotes predictability is with our “Outsourced General Counsel” solution. Growing companies often waste considerable amounts of money when they reach the stage where they have a consistent, repeating need for legal services, but not necessarily enough of a need to justify the cost of hiring a full-time attorney to serve as General Counsel. Companies in this predicament are typically forced to hire different attorneys for different legal issues, and each time they do, the clock starts running, and legal bills can quickly get out of hand. Established companies are not immune to these issues. Even established companies struggle with the problem of securing legal expertise economically—often settling for a lower level of legal experience in order to fill the role within budget, and still often needing to hire outside counsel because, regardless what an attorney job applicant might tell you, the fact is, no lawyer is an expert in all fields.
BNR offer the option of retaining us as your Outsourced General Counsel. By doing so, you gain many important benefits, such as:
- Access to all of our attorneys and their varying fields of expertise, as opposed to one lawyer trying to solve problems in legal fields in which he or she might have little experience;
- A fixed monthly fee, for which all of your legal needs can be met—no surprise, soul-crushing bills on the first of the month;
- No employment taxes, health insurance premiums or other employment benefits;
- No such thing as sick days, personal days or employee turnover, or the costs—in time and money—associated with them; and
- No additional office leasing costs because this “employee” doesn’t require you to increase the square footage of your office space.