Legal Fee Advisors™ Launches to Bring Fairness and Transparency to Legal Billing Practices

Posted on June 10th, 2013 by Legal Fee Advisors

Legal Fee Advisors™ Launches to Bring Fairness and Transparency to Legal Billing Practices

Corporate Services to Include Customization of Corporate Billing Practices, Private Fee Negotiation and Expert Testimony to Assure Fairness in Legal Fees

NEW YORK, June 10, 2013 – Many businesses are routinely overcharged for legal services – and are very often unaware of this fact – which can potentially cost millions. Legal Fee Advisors™, launched today, will seek to combat the practice of overbilling and assure fairness in legal fees on behalf of corporate clients. Led by legal industry veteran David Paige and supported by a diversified team of highly experienced legal practice authorities, the company will provide consultation and negotiation assistance to achieve reasonable charges for services provided by law firms. Based in New York City, Legal Fee Advisors will immediately begin working with businesses that retain outside counsel for long-term and ongoing engagements, financial transactions or expensive litigation matters.

Principles of Fair Legal Billing

Legal representation can be a lengthy and expensive arrangement, especially related to litigated corporate matters. While the American Bar Association (ABA) maintains ethical standards to guide law firms in client relations, the reality is that legal billings are often inflated by as much as 15 to 20 percent.

As part of Legal Fee Advisors’ services, Paige helps clients understand common practices that some law firms employ that can inflate billing, including:

• Billing for administrative or clerical tasks at legal service rates;
• Charging for standard firm overhead or disbursements at a profit;
• Not communicating clearly about charges involved with the time, effort and expense of representation; and
• Undue inefficiencies in servicing clients, such as overstaffing.

“Legal billings are highly complex, especially when corporate matters demand extraordinary resources and attention to come to resolution. That doesn’t mean law firms should disregard ethical and corporate best billing practices to achieve unfair levels of compensation,” says Paige. “Legal Fee Advisors provides a service that not only seeks to achieve a fair and ethical legal billing relationship, but also provides a significant financial reprieve for a complicated process that can easily be one of the most expensive for a business,” he added.

Advisors, Experts & Advocates for Fairness in Legal Fees

Initially, Legal Fee Advisors will provide two distinct service lines created to help businesses address legal billing issues, with a third intended for a larger consumer base currently in development:

• Legal Fee Auditors™ – An approach-agnostic assessment of current and past legal fees paid by a client to determine which overbilling practices or inconsistencies can be addressed and subsequently adjusted. Legal Fee Auditors also helps to create clear billing standards for working with outside counsel going forward, coordinates and optimizes the use of e-billing systems, obtains buy-in from law firms and coordinates outside vendors [such as e-discovery services], resulting in a more transparent billing process.

• Legal Fee Experts™ – A panel of legal experts that provides testimony in court proceedings or assists in private resolution of law firm billing disputes. Legal Fee Experts leverage their intimate knowledge of the U.S. legal system and work to efficiently and systematically address and resolve billing inaccuracies and inconsistencies.

David Paige, founder of Legal Fee Advisors, is a leading authority on the propriety of legal fees and billings, having guided many Fortune 1000 companies on highly complex legal billing issues over his 25-year career. Paige has worked with blue chip corporations to develop the methodologies for achieving significant reductions in outside legal costs and has served as a testifying expert in legal fee dispute cases. Prior to establishing Legal Fee Advisors, he was a founder and managing director of Sterling Analytics where he drew on his experience as an attorney to create and grow one of the industry’s first legal fees advisory and consulting companies. Before that, Paige served in a number of attorney roles, including general counsel, and law firm partner, actively litigating for major insurers and managing and supervising complex insurance coverage litigations. He is licensed to practice law in the state of New York and holds insurance broker licenses in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia and has been admitted pro haec vice in other states. Paige maintains affiliations with the American Bar Association’s Section on Professional Responsibility, the New York City Bar Association, the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers and the National Association of Legal Fee Advisors.

A senior team member helping to lead the Legal Fee Auditors and Legal Fee Experts groups is Beth Popik, a skilled legal fee professional with more than 20 years experience in designing, implementing and managing legal auditing programs and overseeing outside counsel on legal spend. She has advised and worked with a broad range of insurance companies and other corporations during her career. Admitted to practice law in the state of New York, Beth is a Certified Litigation Management Professional. She is a member of the Claims and Litigation Management Alliance, and the New York City Bar and participates in various other industry groups and associations related to legal billing, legal business operations and litigation management.

About Legal Fee Advisors
Legal Fee Advisors is a leading authority on legal fee billing standards and law firm practice management. Headquartered in New York City, the company provides consultancy services and testimony experts to assist in evaluating and negotiating fair legal fees. Legal Fee Advisors was founded in 2013 by legal expert David Paige, who has a successful track record in analyzing and negotiating fair legal fees on behalf of companies in the technology, financial, health care, pharmaceutical, retail and real estate industries. Fair Legal Fees. Finally.

For more information about Legal Fee Advisors, visit www.legalfeeadvisors.com.

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