Canadian Lawyer

May 2020

The most widely read magazine for Canadian lawyers

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16 www.canadianlawyermag.com LEGAL FEES SURVEY FEATURES Cited by the Supreme Court of Canada Available risk-free for 45 days Online: store.thomsonreuters.ca Call Toll-Free: +1 800 387 5164 In Toronto: 416 609 3800 Print + ProView eBook* Order # 30846731 $642 2 volume looseleaf supplemented book + eBook* Anticipated upkeep cost – $480 per supplement 4-6 supplements per year Supplements invoiced separately Print only Order # 30842908 $642 ProView eBook* only Order # 30912733 $584 Prices include shipping and handling. Price(s) subject to change without notice and subject to applicable taxes. Canadian Employment Law Stacey Reginald Ball "The most comprehensive text on em- ployment law in Canada. It is carefully constructed and accurate." Canadian Bar Review More than 7,000 cases cited Canadian Employment Law is a one-stop reference that provides a thorough survey of the law and analysis of developing trends, suggesting potential avenues of attack as well as identifying potential weaknesses in the law. With methodically organized chapters covering the complete range of employment law, this book provides the kind of detailed examination of the facts you can count on. The work includes a Table of Reasonable Notice – a chart that groups together comparable types of positions so you can easily compare length of notice awards. All topics are illustrated with extensive case law and useful footnotes. Choose eBook, Print, or both Experience the freedom and flexibility to work wherever and whenever you want, with or without an internet connection, with Thomson Reuters ProView®, the premier eBook experience for professionals worldwide. *eBook not available to trade bookstores, third-party distributors, and academic institutions. © 2020 Thomson Reuters Canada Limited TR1046942-NM Also available online on WestlawNext® Canada EmploymentSource™ that the traditional legal fee structure does not encourage lawyers to be as efficient as possible as their fee is tied to time. There needs to be some incentive to encourage more efficiency." For Hallsor, the key to efficiency with the billable-hour model is communication with the client and transparency when the bill comes. "I think clients like the billable hour. I know there's lots of people out there who think it's old-fashioned, but I think it gives the client a lot of accountability," he says. Hallsor says the bills his firm produces are detailed, the client can see what's been done and there's an opportunity for a discussion if they think something took longer than it should have. As managing partner, the bill- able hour also facilitates efficiently running the shop, a "measuring tool" for the produc- tivity of lawyers and practice areas, he says. "As long as your billable-hour bills are open and the client can see your hours, that is the answer," he says. Billing by the hour inter- nally and only disclosing the dollar amount to the client — as Hallsor sees a lot of firms doing — "that's a problem." Hourly rates also discipline the client, he says. If clients know it's going to cost them extra, they'll be motivated to communicate efficiently. Instead of calling their lawyer 10 times a day, they will distill all the informa- tion into one email. "There's two parties that can drive up the hours and it's not always the lawyer," he says. Although contingency fees are common in litigation and make sense for a high-volume practice where clients can't fund the litiga- tion, Hallsor says, in Crease Harman's liti- gation practice, clients get more value in the long run from an hourly rate. "I know that a lot of clients may feel that there's an incentive for the lawyer to work harder if their pay is on the line. But as professionals, of course, we want to win every case and we always work hard," he says. "At a practical level, I don't think we work harder on contingency files than we do on other files. We work hard on every file and we try to get

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