Alternative Fee Arrangements - #Ethics CLE On-Demand!

Jean Bertrand

Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFA's) can sound good: predictability, discounts, and the outside lawyer gets a guarantee of a certain measure of work. In practice, however, there can be unforeseen consequences, especially when two or more firms are assigned aspects of the same litigation and their fees are constrained by AFA's.
Issues include ABA Model Rule 1.5 ("Reasonableness of Fees and Expenses") and its application to "success" fees, the conflict between outside counsel's duties to the client and his/her own financial interest when a fee cap is reached before the matter has concluded, fungibility of services, disparity of effective hourly rates, overloading of firms and load-leveling among firms.
Trial lawyer Jean Bertrand will discuss allocation of risk and the attendant ethical conflicts that can arise under several kinds of AFA.     
Title:
Alternative Fee Arrangements
Speaker:
Jean Bertrand -- Schiff Hardin (San Francisco, CA)
Credit:
.25 CLE Ethics Credit Hours Available for AK AZ CA CO FL GA HI KY LA MO ND NJ NY TX UT WA
Sponsor:
Trial.com
More:
http://trial.com/cle/courses/2011-chi/bertrand.html