Geeklawyer was accused of using boilerplate text in a contract. He was asked to justify the high price of the contract given that the text was “just boilerplate lifted from an online precedents database” (such as LexusNazis) with a single clause to be drafted & inserted. Geeklawyer was a bit peeved: he can’t justify the subscriptions to Lexis so does most of his drafting from scratch, plus reuse the odd bit of stuff he stumbles upon elsewhere. His fees are modest in the circumstance.
How wide is this conception of lawyers just doing cut and paste jobs, he wonders? Is Geeklawyer behind the curve perhaps?
I guess the main question is factual - what was the basis for the “high price” if the clause was in an existing precedent? Perhaps time taken to analyze the problem and decide what boilerplate was appropriate? And what was the fee agreement with the client? Time required? Flat fee for the agreement? etc. etc.
Geeklawyer tries to do flat fees wherever possible as this gives punters certainty & predictability; but he retain the right to devolve to hourly charging if the draft degenerates into an all consuming beast.
” Perhaps time taken to analyze the problem and decide what boilerplate was appropriate?”
Ha! Geeklawyer likes this argument. It is close to the American artist Whistler’s rejoinder to the question asked in cross examination: “you seek 1000 Guineas for a few hours work?”, “No, I asked it for the knowledge of a lifetime.”
Somehow Geeklawyer doubts that the ‘lawyer as artist” metaphor will be met with acceptance on charging issues! Hyndman is clearly more pert than Geeklawyer.
There’s a classic story about a problem in a factory/data center/nuclear plant, etc, where nobody can figure out what’s wrong. So, the find some semi-retired guy who knows all about the system and get him to come in, promising they’ll pay whatever he wants if he fixes the problem.
So, this guy comes in, spends a minute looking at the machine/server/whatever, turns one knob and walks out, saying the problem is fixed.
True to his word, the problem is solved, but the management flips over the £1000 bill. “How can you charge this much! You only spend a minute of time on the problem. We demand an itemised bill showing how you arrived at this figure.”
The next day, the company gets their itemised bill. It reads:
“Time spent adjusting setting: £5
Knowing which knob to adjust: £995″
The point is that you pay a good lawyer not to craft words, but to know which words need to go where.