Charlie Jimerson | Rethinking the Billable Hour for Sustainable Law Firm Growth

Elise Holtzman: Hi, everyone. It's Elise Holtzman here, a former practicing lawyer and the host of The Lawyer's Edge Podcast. Welcome back for another episode.

Some law firms chase growth for growth's sake. Others stay stuck in old habits, resisting change altogether. But a few take a different path, scaling with intention by investing in culture, technology, and long-term client relationships.

Today's guest is the founding partner of a firm that's doing just that. Known for its strategic approach to litigation and innovative service models, the firm has built a reputation for delivering results while challenging the traditional playbook of law firm management. In this episode, we're going to explore how they've navigated growth, leveraged emerging technology like AI, and stayed focused on leadership, culture, and lasting client partnerships.

Before we dive in, though, I want to let you know that today's episode is brought to you by the Ignite Women's Business Development Accelerator, a nine-month business development program created by women lawyers for women lawyers. Ignite is a carefully designed business development program containing content, coaching, and a community of like-minded women who are committed to becoming rainmakers and supporting the retention and advancement of other women in the profession. To learn more about Ignite, visit thelawyersedge.com/ignite.

I am delighted to welcome my guest today, Charlie Jimerson of Jimerson Birr, a Jacksonville, Florida-based business law firm with a national reputation for litigation, regulatory, and transactional work. Charlie is the firm's founder and CEO. He's a U.S. Air Force veteran, a board-certified construction law attorney, and a widely recognized leader in the legal and business communities. Under Charlie's leadership, Jimerson Birr has been repeatedly honored for its workplace culture, growth, and client service. Charlie, welcome to The Lawyer's Edge.

Charlie Jimerson: Elise, thank you so much for having me. It's great to join the podcast. I've listened to the podcast many, many times, and I love what you're doing for our industry and for the community that you're serving.

Elise Holtzman: Thanks so much, Charlie. I'm really glad that you listen in, and I'm happy to have you here today. One of the reasons I invited you to join me on this show is that you are intentionally breaking the rules when it comes to growing and scaling a law firm, which is, I think we can say, no small feat in our profession. So I'm curious, first of all, what inspired you to build Jimerson Birr in the first place? What were some of the important decisions that have shaped the firm's identity?

Charlie Jimerson: Oh, well, that could be a proverbial two-year conversation, but I'll try to limit it to maybe a one-shot conversation. So I was right out of law school. It was a robust legal environment. I had the opportunity to go to a lot of different places if I had chosen to. I went to a firm that had more of a Biglaw traditional infrastructure. When I was there, I got that similar type of experience that a young lawyer coming up through Biglaw type of ranks would get.

I felt fairly disenfranchised. I wasn't sure if I was even passionate about the practice, given what my experience at that point was. I looked around and saw what I viewed as managerial low-hanging fruit, leadership low-hanging fruit. For better or for worse, Jimerson Birr was born out of a recognition that I think I can do it better than these people. At the core of any relationship is this foundational piece of trust. When you're hitching your wagons to something or someone, you certainly need to go through some type of trust-building analysis.

For me, when founding the firm, just openly and honestly, I trusted myself more than I trusted the proverbial them, and really whoever them might have been in the industry of law. I just thought that it's now or never. At the time, it's ridiculous considering my age and where I was in my career path. But it was so evident to me that the sense of urgency around change needed in our industry needed to begin and I was willing to step up and be part of that change-making.

Elise Holtzman: Yeah, that sounds like a lot of confidence. I don't think very many young lawyers, I mean, certainly some do it. Some go out and start their own firm, but maybe not as intentionally as you did. By the way, how many years were you into law practice?

Charlie Jimerson: I was not yet in my fourth year.

Elise Holtzman: Wow. So when you got started, did you have the same vision back then that you have now, or has that evolved over time?

Charlie Jimerson: Elements of it, very big elements in terms of a value-driven practice and a values-driven practice. So that was very much at the core of my offerings, thinking that I could really invest in a different and better way to serve clients. I could focus diligently on outcomes, and my commitment to quality would be very evident throughout the way.

So living a values-based practice was something that I wasn't seeing a lot in the law firms that I was studying and examining, and in the ones that I was a part of.

Elise Holtzman: I was just curious, when you say values-based practice, what were some of the values that you thought were important that were not being honored in the law firm where you started?

Charlie Jimerson: Our core values of our firm are commitment to service, commitment to quality, and commitment to results. So if I isolated things, I could point to case studies, cases in point, as to how those things aren't consistently applied in the industry of law or the experiences that I had around me.

But at the end of the day, I think our industry really suffers from at times a lack of service before self mentality and really an accountability and ownership results addict type of commitment that I just didn't see from lawyers that often find themselves getting lost in the hamster wheel and losing track of really the journey and the destination that they're going, which is the client's desired version of value and the outcome that the client wants, not the outcome that maybe a lawyer wants.

I was seeing that a lot, and many component parts are to blame for that. That might be the subject matter of a different podcast, but this godforsaken billable hour that we're all handcuffed by is, if I'm pointing to a major contributing factor, that would be one of my starting points for that. It has generated what I would consider an industry-wide cultural erosion and really a values erosion within the practice of law that our lawyers and the lawyers who are churning in the hamster wheel just themselves don't even recognize.

Elise Holtzman: It is one of the diehards of the legal profession. Most lawyers can't imagine doing things differently. I mean, I think there are some trying alternative billing methods and fee structures, but it's a very hard habit to break because we know that's what the legal profession has been built on. So I know you are leading the charge here and transforming law from the billable hour model to a value-based type of a model. Why are you doing it? I mean, you talk about how you think it's leading to cultural erosion, among other things. So first of all, why are you doing it? Then let's talk about what that looks like in practice.

Charlie Jimerson: Well, what got us here won't get us there. I recognized that a long time ago that this is a metastasized cancer that is attached to the way that we deliver our services. I can get into all the whys that the billable hour is a dysfunctional piece of the business model and the leverage concept does not produce a scalable model economically.

But at its core, there's an inherent moral conflict about whether it actually arises or inadvertently arises when it comes to the billable hour. It doesn't promote the desired partnership that is necessary to truly have a lawyer elevated to a place of a strategic partner and an invested, trusted advisor.

I've come over the 20-plus years of practicing law now to understand that the reactionary nature of lawyers and the way that they work, and the reactionary nature of clients and the way that clients have been trained to utilize lawyers, is causing many, many problems. The billable hour is a big root cause of that. So if you've got more of an invested partnership, for example, where you're focusing on proactive preventive care rather than triage and treatment and rehabilitation, well, then we're more of an invested stakeholder at the table when clients are working through legal issues first and then business issues second.

I envision a world, and I think part of our value proposition is we want to be at that intersection of business and law, where we know your people, processes, and technologies just as well as you do, as well as the bolt-on of the law. So the second prong was the way that we're working on that. At the end of the day, it has to be that alignment in our business of people, process, and technology that can reduce our service offerings to productized offerings that we can bolt on with service and product cadence to have the consistency of preventive care in order to be able to button it up as a non-billable service offering.

Elise Holtzman: Well, to your point, we've trained our clients sometimes not to want to call us because they know that every time they call us, the cash register is going to start to ring. That right away, I think, can cause a challenge in many situations. You talk about the intersection of technology and these offerings. I know that at least for some of your clients, you have a subscription model. So what does that look like?

Because I think that many people listening will be convinced that the billable hour is not a great model, but they're not necessarily sure of how something else can work in practice. So I'd love your insight on how you are doing it, what it looks like, and how it's been successful, both from the client side and from the law firm side.

Charlie Jimerson: I'll land the plane at what our subscription offering is, but I think it's important for us to center the conversation on an incremental retreat from this plaguing model. So first, it needs to start with our industry coming up with an enhanced understanding of just what proven processes you have in place. I see the book Processes behind you, which is an EOS principle. It's an EOS-based book. I don't know if you've got any more on your bookshelf. I can't tell.

Elise Holtzman: I do. I have several of Gino Wickman's books on my shelf, for sure.

Charlie Jimerson: Very good. Yeah, we operate under EOS. That's a really helpful calibrator for us to run like a business instead of like this fiefdom of Somali warlords that happens to be most law firms. It starts with liquidating things to your processes. So if you have a process around it, then you can acquire data. If you can have data around it, then you can understand what your cost of goods sold.

If you're not really getting a good understanding of your cost of goods sold, then you can understand how to price it profitably. That's where everything mostly stops for law firms is they really don't work with proven processes. So if law firms are thinking about how to move beyond this godforsaken billable hour, then it has to first start with aligning your people, processes, and technology.

Doing the legwork associated with the change management and breaking those old habits that really are tethered to that old billable hour mentality. Once you've tactically executed on that or at least commenced the process of that, it starts to beget this cultural awakening and this philosophical awakening that there's a better way of doing things. The better way of doing things has to also invoke a change in the sales process.

So you're evaluating how can we do this particular thing that we've done so many times, and we have the acumen internally to be able to do it, how can we liquidate it to a predictable price point where sometimes we win and sometimes we lose, but by God, clients get predictable pricing associated with it. It starts with that flywheel starting to turn.

It starts with also approaching the practice of law as a more invested partnership where you're willing to look at things entrepreneurially and to whether it's putting it to flat fees, to hybrid arrangements, contingency arrangements, to bundled service offerings or whatever. There are just many ways to skin a cat there. Most law firms present a pricing structure that is akin to an ultimatum. That's what the billable hour really is. It's an ultimatum.

I don't know that the market, especially in this age with technology advancing as rapidly as it has and challenging the knowledge-based workforce, I don't know that that market will be adherent to this ultimatum for much longer. So we've been ahead of this for over five years now. But I think that there are a lot of Thanksgiving turkeys that are just getting fattened up and getting ready to put on a plate over time.

So, to more succinctly answer your question, in terms of subscription model, I mean, and this is year 17 for my law firm, so we have over a period of time, I think the numbers we've served 8,000 clients in 17 years. I don't even know how many tens of thousands of matters that we've performed. So we've learned a thing or two about that in the process.

What we've come to learn is that the market that we care about, and that we do the best for, and that fulfills more of our purpose, cause, and passion using U.S. terms, is that small and mid-sized business market, which at times is a forgotten market, and it doesn't have access to legal care. That non-access to legal care has been flying blind and really existing without that peace of mind that it's necessary to run a good business.

So we've been able to study them and realize that there are about 25 issues that any SMB is going to encounter. It doesn't matter what industry that you're in. It's really the businesses are going to encounter the same variant of issues. We've created a bundled set of products and service offerings that we can liquidate to a particular price point, hopefully still make decent money out of it, but also reduce their overall cost of legal work and reduce it to a predictable recurring rhythm from a budgetary standpoint.

Elise Holtzman: Can you give me an example of what one of those 25 services looks like?

Charlie Jimerson: We've got part of our subscription offerings or what we call the core four. So the core four is: protect the principles, protect the people, protect the pipeline, protect the process. So we have a predictable rhythm of product and service delivery where we essentially do audits and be able to understand where the foundational pieces and risks associated with what's the status of those risks in those contracts or those policies or any of the strategic operational plans that are in place relative to protecting the principal people processes.

And the pipeline, it comes to the principles. Of course, you've got the fundamental corporate governance documents that have to be aligned. When it comes to the people, do you have all of your employment-related policies and contracts and vendor and outsource-related contracts in order? When it comes to the pipeline, your master goods and services agreements and the way that you're capitalizing and the way that you're otherwise collecting.

When it comes to the processes, it's, of course, all of those processes and operational compliance issues. Really just the way that you practice, the way that you execute as a business, your core processes, are all of those legally compliant and otherwise optimized for efficiency. So we've got lawyers trained on an industry by industry basis to be able to understand how to protect the core four, how to be a proactive technician to diagnose those issues, and how to be a stakeholder at the table with a client on a consistent, predictable rhythm that enables them to have that assurance that, "You know what? These folks got this. That monkey's off my back. I'm now moving forward, focusing on how to grow and scale this operation because that festering wound that's underneath my skin, I don't have to really have that because somebody else is highly compensated to worry about this issue for me." They don't have to worry.

Elise Holtzman: Well, and they know in advance what their legal spend is going to be. I mean, I don't know, it might have been you, Charlie, I can't remember, but the way somebody put it to me was something along the lines of if you are building a house and you call the contractor and you say, "Hey, I'd like an estimate," and they say, "Well, it's going to just depend how long it takes," and you say, "Well, how long is it going to take?" and they say, "Well, I don't know. Let's see what happens," you're not going to hire that contractor. Yet that's what we're expecting our legal clients to do.

I think that knowing the legal spend is important. Just in a very detail-oriented question, let's say I'm the client. I'm the new client that comes in. I'm a small to mid-sized business. I do have these concerns. I'm sort of, I've got a great business, but I'm flying by the seat of my pants a little bit when it comes to all the legal stuff. Am I purchasing that entire package or am I coming in and saying, "Well, I need this piece of it rather than that piece of it"? Like, is it all four of them or are you evaluating with the client what they need and then helping them determine which pieces of it are right for them?

Charlie Jimerson: Everything from the way that we operate works off of our health checks. So the same way that you perform diagnostics within, you're noticing that I'm probably harkening back to medical concepts. There are so many things broken with the medical career, the industry, but the way that they run businesses and the functionality of it, especially since it has continued to be optimized after private equity has gotten way more involved. It's the easiest direct parallel for us.

So the body has to be checked frequently to diagnose what your known issues are and to understand if you have any unknown issues. So we're frequently putting our clients under health checks to be able to understand exactly what their issues are so that we can understand how to prioritize preventive care and treatment.

Your question in terms of what each client needs. So we have different levels of packages, plans. They're called longevity legal plans. Those legal plans, they're able to be equipped for a starter. You know, really, we've divided in three buckets, starter, scaling, and sustainability. So those are the three phases of really any SMB's life cycle. There are startup companies, scaling-based companies, they're in growth mode. Then now they're at growth mode and sustainability. It's all about optimizing. Their past growth mode, it's about optimizing, settling, and getting secured and stabilized.

We have different service offerings at different levels for those respective ones. In any event that it's outside of our package, we'd be willing to have a value-based conversation with the client to see if there was some type of a la carte type of offering that we could do. Of course, we always will have our specialty side of the house where we would operate on our billable hour. Some level of things are not going to be able to be productized. We write scoped so that we prevent those things from being included in our scopes.

Elise Holtzman: So there's still room for the billable hour?

Charlie Jimerson: There should be. There should be. That's where lawyers get hung up. So the solution in the future, it's amazing, Pareto's principle is all around us. We're never going to get to fully non-billable hour type of stuff where it's flat fee or bundled subscriptions or whatever iterations of pricing that would ever come out. There's always going to be some unscopable piece of work that we don't have the foresight to be able to see through all the risks associating it to a liquidated price offering.

That's okay, we have to be at peace with that. We just have to figure out and realize and come to grips with the fact that that is an anomalous circumstance. We just aren't using our brains as an industry. We're too arrogant and too haughty. We think that we are so fricking special that everything we do is so tailored and unique. That is the biggest bull that exists in our industry.

The reality is, and I don't care what any lawyer tells you, law is a linear path. It is an interstate highway. You're dealing with a transaction, linear path. Lawsuit, linear path. Complex regulatory issue, linear path. The only question is, when you get new variants of variables that come in, facts, parties, etc., unknowns that come in, are you going to treat this as an exit where you get off the interstate highway and now you start running perpendicularly? Or is that a rest area where you just get off the highway, you deal with that variant, and you get right back on the path?

The reality is most new variants, these things that lawyers are so damn special that they're needed to resolve those, they're just rest areas, and they haven't realized that the rest areas are not exit ramps.

Elise Holtzman: You're pretty passionate about this stuff, Charlie. I can tell. It’s great.

Charlie Jimerson: Yeah, I am. I really am. I mean, I've been managing lawyers for a long period of time and working with lawyers, and sometimes lawyers are pretty damn unimpressive people. We got to get better as an industry. We've got to get better.

Elise Holtzman: Well, look, I think that one of the things we need to recognize, and people have been so reluctant to do this for so many years, is that the legal profession is a legal business. We think we're special snowflakes, and we think that the law biz has to run differently than every other business. Of course, there are elements of it. We have ethics considerations, and there are certain elements of it that are unique.

But to your point, if you're somebody who's following EOS, which is the Entrepreneur's Operating System, you see that it can work for law firms as well. So I think that innovating and thinking about these things, as I know you do on a regular basis, continues to be important. That's, again, one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show, because I want other people to hear about this.

One of the things I'm interested in is the clients. How are they responding to subscription pricing or other value-based engagements?

Charlie Jimerson: Breach. What's the argue about there? I mean, we didn't just fly off of the handle and do this ad hoc as something that we are fantasizing about. We did our diligence. So when we did, we did multiple years of deep client surveying.

Our three biggest responses in terms of "What do you want out of your law firm?" we surveyed anything from really big companies and their in-house legal departments to Joe the Painter type of small businesses and everything in between. We got a big enough statistically defensible response that predictable pricing was the number one thing that they got, more so than even cost effectiveness.

The surprise element is what clients hate. It's not even the cheap or expensive element, which blew our minds. That was surprising to us. The second part is expertise to understand that whole monkey off my back, "I've got it. This thing that is so complex and stressful to me, or this thing where I don't have the requisite licensure access to be able to problem solve, you're the right person, you're the right firm," and that now this thing, you got this, and I don't have it, that's number two.

Then the commitment, the results, I got to get the desired outcome was number three. Where lawyers really screw up, and this is a rant, so indulge me if you wouldn't mind, where lawyers really screw up is they think quality, like the breadth of this big expensive Cadillac that they have bought, presented to this client that they worked on and fine-tuned and all of that, that that's what really matters.

But really, that didn't even come close to registering in the top 10 consistently of our surveys.

Elise Holtzman: They just want their goals achieved and their problem solved, and it doesn't [sic] to be pretty as long as it gets done the right way.

Charlie Jimerson: Yeah. They don't want a 30-page brief on something. They don't understand or care about that. They hired you to do this result and bring this particular value. Value is defined by them and not by us.

lawyer's mindset is, "I wrote an amazing brief, therefore I'm valuable." Hogwash, not true. Client determines what value is. You have to meet value there.

Elise Holtzman: Yeah, it's a mindset shift for sure for a lot of people. Let's shift gears a little bit, although I think it's all related. You've talked about the future of law being tech-enabled, and a lot of people are starting to talk about AI, but you're an early adopter.

I mean, you and I were in a conference room together where we learned that a lot of small and midsize firms, most of them are not really paying attention to AI. I mean, I think it was like one or two firms out of over 100 firms had even had an AI policy in place. So tell me a little bit about how you're using AI to enhance your practice and whether this is something where you're replacing people or you're just using the AI to enhance your team and what you're able to deliver to clients.

Charlie Jimerson: Well, we'll skip past the why part of AI because we'll just assume that we're past that conversation and now we're into the how part.

Elise Holtzman: I think that's right.

Charlie Jimerson: All right. Very good. We've been good, but I don't think we're great yet in this particular area. We're working hard at it every day. I bet if you compared us to the marketplace, the marketplace would say we're great. But by our standards, we are not great yet.

We have not gone fast enough for me, but then again, we're never going fast enough for me. So we have chosen first to focus on the business processes associated with the firm and less so much on the service delivery aspect. That part is where I think law firms are consistently getting hung up and where I think law firms are going to be taken advantage of in the future.

I think they are right now, if you look at, and I won't name names of firms or products on this, but there are certain, I would consider, off-the-shelf products that are being propagated to firms and certain really big accessible platforms that have raised a ton of money and already had announced huge sums of money that they have earned from clients in terms of customer contracts that have been really more focused on the service delivery aspect in what I would consider an unimpressive way.

So, we've been tailoring bits and pieces of that on the service delivery part for our AI offerings, waiting to create, letting that shake out a little bit, and getting more of our process and data aligned so that we're able to do the basics at first and then probably end up putting together a bespoke platform.

So our successes have been in business processes. For example, we use a fair amount of AI in our sales and marketing process. We're using AI to replace the client onboarding process. We've used AI to augment and replace our internal customer collections processes. We've used AI significantly in our talent acquisition processes. I mean, we could talk at length about our use cases on the business side on that and why and how that's a good starting point.

Elise Holtzman: I love that idea. I think it's a great starting point because, first of all, you're not going out into the marketplace and affecting clients with it in any risky way. I mean, obviously, you're interacting with the clients with AI in some way if you're doing the intake process and marketing and that sort of thing, but it gives you the opportunity to learn it and play with it and work out the kinks and figure out where the blind spots are and that sort of thing without having it affect the clients.

Charlie Jimerson: Yeah, yeah. Those are ubiquitous problems that every business has. So we don't have to look for these customized solutions that are unique to the industry, and then avoid the predators that are trying to prey on the gullible law purchasers.

So we're trying to avoid all of that. We're trying to just say, "These pieces are vetted by the marketplace and all the businesses." We have known commodities there. We have an option one or an option two, or sometimes an option three. We just got to vet out these options because the use cases are evident across all the business processes.

Furthermore, herding the cats, change management with lawyers is a lot harder than it is with your back-of-the-house folks. Those I've historically found are more willing culture carriers when it comes to these type of things. So getting their buy-in to be able to generate the groundswell of momentum is an easier lift from a leadership standpoint.

Elise Holtzman: It's so interesting to me that you just use the term culture carriers. As you look to continue growing the firm and making sure that the culture that you're intentionally developing persists even during growth, who are the kinds of people who are a good fit for you?

You go out into the marketplace and you're bringing people on as you grow. Obviously, not everybody's going to be a fit for this kind of situation. So what are you looking for in lawyers and other folks, other professionals that are going to thrive at your firm, especially as things change? We know things don't stay the same, even if many lawyers wish it would be that way.

Charlie Jimerson: EOS doesn't have all the answers, but this is an area where EOS is really a great lodestar to point back to.

So it's GWC plus core values. So do they get it? Do they understand the job and what the task is of them, what the core functionality of the role is? Do they want it? Are they motivated and excited? Do they want to be excellent in this role that they're being asked to perform? Do they have the capacity to do it? Do they have their capacity resources-wise? Do they have the acuity, the talent to be able to do it?

So from our perspective, the G is a complicated thing at times because the G requires good organizational structuring. So G has to rely on RPRS. So right person, right seat is important to be able to get down. If you have the right to get the right person in the right seat and to ensure that the right person gets the job, what do you first have to start with? We have to first start with the RS. You got to start with the right seat.

So are you structured appropriately? Do you have the role clearly defined? Do you have measurements of success? Do you have career progression documented structurally within the organization? Do you have a building training set to go from level one to level two to level three within that? So RPRS, getting the right person entails having first owning right seat. So RPRS goes into GWC, then goes into core values. Ultimately, core values are commitment to service, quality, and results. Those are the things that are going to make someone the right person, whether they get it, want it, or have the capacity to do it, determines whether or not they're in the right seat.

Elise Holtzman: Charlie, I have a couple more questions for you before we wind up today. You described pressure as a privilege. I think there are so many people in the world that are under pressure. Certainly, a lot of lawyers are under pressure. What do you mean by pressure as a privilege? How has that philosophy shaped you and helped you make the choices that you make every day?

Charlie Jimerson: When you're trying to earn an above and beyond reputation and you are trying to be a results addict and you live this find a way or make one lifestyle professionally or personally with that mentality, you are otherwise ingrained in an earn-your-keep mindset that "I'm going to earn my keep, I'm going to serve others, I'm going to put others above myself, and I'm going to commit to excellence in all I do." With that, you find yourself taking on things and responsibilities that test yourself.

We're not on some preordained destiny in life. The choices that we make otherwise mold our destinies. With those choices, if you make choices to take on more pressure, it's because you have the privilege to do that. Most of the time, anything worthwhile, any privilege you've ascertained that's worth a flip is because you've earned the right to be in that privilege, not the privilege given to you.

So when you have pressure, you've ostensibly earned the right to have that pressure. It is a privilege. One, if you can't accept, someone else will gladly step in and appreciate that pressure as a privilege. Pressure means that people rely on you. They care about you. They need you. When people need you, you've got to deliver. Buddy, that's the job. That is the job. You have to deliver because people are relying on you, and you cannot let people down. That's just a fundamental fact of an accountable person.

So you got to live a pressure-is-privilege lifestyle. It's not you have to, it's you get to. That's all sorts of atomic habits type of talk. But it's true. An accountable person who is relied on needs to live by those types of notions.

Elise Holtzman: I love that. I love that philosophy. It explains a lot to me about the things that you strive for. So thank you for sharing that. So I'm going to ask you the same question I ask all of my guests at the end of the show. It goes like this. There's a phenomenon called the curse of knowledge, where experts sometimes forget that what is so obvious and natural to them is not at all obvious to others.

When it comes to intentionally growing a law firm that's built for what clients really want and need, what's a principle or piece of advice that may seem obvious to you, but you think is important for other law firm leaders perhaps to hear?

Charlie Jimerson: Let's harken back to that client survey that I just referenced. So the client survey said that clients really want predictable pricing. And then the other element was they really want desired outcome. So I think a no-surprises, just solutions approach to practicing law is what the takeaway is. So no surprises plus value, just solutions.

So if you break each element of that down, no surprises, is that within our control or not within our control? That's within our control. We just have to be better communicators. We have to be proactive. We have to make sure that the clients make well-informed decisions. All right. So the value piece, is that within our control or not within our control? That's within our control.

Value is what the client determines that is value. You have to present clients with business risks and choices, and they make choices. All of our choices have consequences. Do you want small, medium, or large for this particular approach? If you pick small, then here are the consequences. Ultimately, that's your call on value. Then the results come when you have that good, clear communication, you've eliminated surprises, you're aligned on value, then you get desired results.

That's something in every piece of that, every elemental piece of that, that lawyers really forget because they're spinning around in the hamster wheel of what I call the productive procrastination cycle.

Elise Holtzman: I think everybody should be thinking this way because there is, as you know, this whole thought, "Well, this is the way it's always been done. This is what we do. There's no other way to do it." It's very clear that there is another way to do it. It requires thought. It requires a lot of preparation. I mean, you talked about all the preparation that goes into going out into the marketplace and saying, "Okay, we have this subscription model or we have these value-based ways of doing things."

I also love the piece about control. "We're acting like it's out of our control, but it's not. It's in our control." So great advice, Charlie. Thank you so much. This is really interesting stuff. I think it's things that a lot of lawyers don't take the time to think about. But I certainly encourage them, and I know you do too, to be thinking about it and not just thinking about it, but acting on it.

Charlie Jimerson: Thanks. I would just say one thing on that note that you just said to close on. "This is the way it's always been done" is the most disgusting, detestable phrase that exists in all of business. I want to fricking puke when I hear that. That is so intellectually lazy. For a group of people who are knowledge-based workers to accept and who are contrarians, that's in their blood to throw the tea out into the harbor, we're going to accept "that's the way it's always been done"? Get out of here.

Great. I can't wait to eat you for Thanksgiving dinner. I love it. Keep saying that. That's wonderful. We got to kill that. We have to kill that as a mentality, or else we're going to die. We have to get rid of that mindset in our industry.

Elise Holtzman: Yeah, that's a great place to end. So thank you, Charlie, for being here. It's always a pleasure talking to you. I got to thank our listeners for tuning in as well. If you've enjoyed today's show, please subscribe, rate, and review us at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. In the meantime, be bold, take action, and make things happen. We'll see you next time.