Enable JS and turn off any ad blockers. Your hourly rate should be based on your field, level of experience, and average attorney fees by state. Attorney fees rose more than 20% in Illinois and Idaho, while they fell nearly 20% or more in Iowa and Indiana. For law firms, data on average billing rates by state and practice area is a good reference point if you're considering increasing hourly rates or are thinking about how to structure value-based billing options or with fixed rates.
If you subtract 10 national holidays and 4 weeks off for vacation or sick days (20 business days), you have 230 business days left, or 1,840 hours if you work 8 hours a day. Understanding what lawyers and paralegals bill in different states and practice areas, as well as the percentages that rates increase (or decrease) year over year, helps law firms decide how to adjust their rates to remain competitive. If you can manage the hourly billing process, this system can help your law firm accurately bill your work. However, if you are an independent lawyer or a small firm, your number may be lower, and that's okay, as long as your fee takes it into account. Attorney rates continued to rise during the pandemic, especially as corporate and bankruptcy attorneys were in greater demand.
Lawyers without experience, without enough work, or located in rural areas are more likely to have the lowest rates. As the graph shows, even as the CPI fell during the pandemic, the average billing rates of lawyers have increased steadily, outpacing inflation, and the rate of law firms has kept pace with inflation for the past two years. Even so, since the first publication of the Trend Report, Clio has worked hard to convince lawyers that focusing on gradually improving their systems, such as increasing the hours they spend on billable work during the day, billing more than that time, and reducing the number of days it took to collect outstanding bills, could have a huge impact on their overall success. Despite persistent rumors about its disappearance, hourly billing remains by far the most popular payment method for lawyers. Therefore, for most offices, setting an appropriate hourly rate for your legal services should be one of your law firm's top priorities and helps answer the question: “How much does a lawyer cost? when customers inevitably ask.
For clients, understanding the hourly rates of attorneys is crucial for budgeting legal fees, helping them to make informed decisions when hiring an attorney, whether they are paying by the hour, using a value-based pricing model or a hybrid model.
