In my legal career I’ve mostly handled non-litigation transactional work in my estate planning practice. However, I happen to be married to a trial lawyer who handles several complex trials each year, so I’ve seen firsthand the intense, all-consuming effort that goes into trial prep.
Most litigators I know seem to thrive in the demanding days and weeks leading up to trial. There’s so much to do and time just seems to zoom by in some sort of time warp. If you are a solo attorney or part of a small firm perhaps during the hectic time of prepping for trial you’ve found yourself wishing there was another attorney around to help dig in and assist.
Trial prep is the perfect time to put LAWCLERK to work. How?
Well, there are countless ways you could leverage the time and talent of our nationwide network of freelance lawyers to help prepare for trial. Last minute research memos. Drafting motions. Reviewing and summarizing depo transcripts. Trial briefs. Preparing witness question outlines. Here’s a recent example to illustrate how our talented freelancers can help.
Beth, an attorney at a small firm, was gearing up for trial and needed a straight-forward motion in limine to exclude expert testimony and the expert’s report. The expert and the report needed to be excluded from trial due to the fact that they were not timely disclosed. Beth posted this as a Project on LAWCLERK, reviewed her applicants and selected a freelancer named Tasha for the work. Tasha is a 4+ year litigation attorney, former judicial clerk and has excellent ratings from the other work she has completed on LAWCLERK.
Beth paid a flat fee price of $500 for the Project. When the work was completed, Tasha reported that she worked a total of 7.9 hours on the motion. Now, we don’t know how much Beth billed this work to her client but the ethics rules say that an attorney can bill their client for work performed by a freelance lawyer at reasonable market rates.
Let’s say that Beth billed the work to her client at the rate of $225 an hour. The bill to the client would be $1,777.50. Factoring in that Beth paid $500 this means her firmed generated a profit of $1,277.50 on this Project.
Plus, by delegating the work Beth freed up her time to do other work that undoubtedly had to get done to be ready for trial. That’s a win before she ever stepped foot in the courtroom!
Not sure how to get started or set the flat fee price for your first project? No worries – we’ve got your back! Please reach out to the LAWCLERK Care Team by email support@lawclerk.legal or by phone (888) 479-5728.
