Nabarro to offer fixed fees for all litigation clients
Nabarro is launching a new regime of fixed-fee deals across its litigation practice which will see the firm shoulder risk for its clients.
For the first time the firm will offer a single headline price for an entire dispute, agreed at the start of the case. Clients will also be offered fixed prices for certain stages of a case or specific tasks.
Instead of hourly rates billed at the end of the case clients will be advised to pay the fixed fee in monthly bills in a bid to appeal to general counsels’ desire for more predictable budgets.
For cases which end earlier than expected, payment will be made up to the last stage in the proceedings. However for cases which go on longer than expected or take unplanned turns, the firm will end up taking a hit.
For a 12-month trial the new plan could translate to a bill of £250,000, split into 12 payments of £20,833. Among the proposed stages, the most expensive is trial and preparation. Nabarro’s example puts that cost at £75,000 compared to the cost of the witness statment stage of £50,000.
As part of the system, Nabarro has developed a new time management software system with its finance team.
Firms have also typically offered to fix fees for specific chunks of work like disclosure, where time and effort is more easily predicted. However Nabarro said its “proactive” move to market an end-to-end fixed-fee product was a step change with other “reactive” offers.
Source: thelawyer
