Introduction to ALR Law
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Hello and welcome to the first installment of Andy Romberger’s ALR Law blog. This blog is for ALR Law, but its scope is not limited to specifically legal matters. This blog is for me to write about matters that interest me and I believe will interest readers as well. Too many legal blogs that I see are dry and purely focus on the legal business. These blogs reflect a concern that I have about many lawyers and law firms in general – that they are afraid to let others see them as real people. As I will write in this blog, I have many interests outside of the law. These interests help to give me a well-rounded, and practical view of legal issues and provide my clients with means to connect with me on a deeper level.
One of the reasons why ALR Law focuses on being a part time general counsel and project general counsel is because I believe that there is great value in free flowing communication between clients and their attorneys. The more complete and timely information that a good attorney can obtain regarding a matter, the greater value he can provide to his client. The typical law firm/client business relationship presents two interrelated impediments to free flowing communication between clients and their attorneys: one is the billable hour; the other is the challenge of the attorney fully gaining the client’s trust that the attorney’s sole focus is on the client.
With skilled business attorneys billing their clients at hundreds of dollars an hour, and some even more than a thousand dollars an hour, it is only natural for clients to be selective about when to speak with outside attorneys and to focus the scope of that conversation as narrowly as possible. A small to middle market company, where cash is king, generally can not afford to have its outside attorneys spend time, and hence the company’s money, on non-critical matters. On the other hand, the standard billing model in reputable business law firms remains the billable hour and attorneys in these law firms are expected to bill a lot of hours. Law firms succeed financially by grinding out as many billable hours as they can. With the billable hour model, there is an inherent conflict in the law firm and client relationship.
Law firms spend a great deal of resources to woo clients. Among the more common attorney marketing strategies are attorneys joining clients for lunch, golf, or other social activities. Ultimately, the objective is for the attorney to solidify a personal relationship with the client. Some attorneys are very successful at this and genuinely enjoy building relationships with people, some of whom just happen to be clients. However, many attorneys are interested in these social meetings for the obvious reason of obtaining more business. Regardless of whether the attorney is genuinely interested in building the relationship or is more focused on building his book of business, the client nonetheless is always mindful of the billable hour conflict and therefore has difficulty achieving a full level of trust that the attorney’s sole focus is on the client. The fact that so many law firms now openly acknowledge that they are willing to consider alternative fee and billing structures confirms the inherent issues with the billable hour business model.
On the other hand, in-house counsel generally are employees who have an agreed upon salary. There is no reason not to utilize an in-house counsel to the fullest extent of his capabilities and to get him involved in all facets of a matter from the outset. In-house counsel’s interests are aligned with those of the business. When I was in-house general counsel at Nuron Biotech after having been a corporate attorney at several prestigious law firms, I saw the information floodgates opened from the business people to me as the general counsel compared to the information that was shared with me as an outside attorney. The floodgates opened immediately as a matter of the job, but then, as trust grew over time, my colleagues would bring me in on matters, not specifically because I was the general counsel, but rather because they trusted that I was someone off of whom they could bounce ideas. Because my colleagues would bring me in at that early a stage to brainstorm ideas, I was able to provide better guidance and counsel to the client.
The goal of ALR Law is to create relationships with companies where ALR Law is viewed as the in-house counsel, but on a part time or temporary basis. ALR Law achieves this goal by utilizing a different business model than other law firms and by utilizing the expertise garnered by my experience both in the private law firm world and as a former general counsel of an international biopharmaceutical company to build a better, more productive attorney/client relationship.