The billable hour is not dead, but many people would like to kill it

LAWYERS hate keeping track of their billable hours. Clients hate them even more; each month they receive bills showing that their legal representatives have worked improbably long hours at incredibly high rates. Billing by the hour often fails to align lawyers’ interests with their clients’. The chap in the wig or the white shoes has an incentive to spin things out for as long as possible. His client would rather win quickly and go home. Since there is clearly a demand for an alternative to the billable hour, you would expect someone to supply it. And indeed, this is starting to happen.

Many legal tasks, although not quite easy, are variations on a theme. The production of a certain document (such as a trademark registration) does not differ vastly from one instance to another. So more firms are using “document assembly” software such as that made by Basha Systems; Seth Roland, the company’s founder, says that his company’s software reduced the time needed to put together a certain type of real-estate lease from 40 hours to one. Automating the automatable stuff allows lawyers to spend more time talking to the client. Everyone wins (including Basha, which Mr Roland says has grown by between 15% and 20% a year for more than a decade). …