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FEATURE CROSS EXAMINED 6 www.canadianlawyermag.com FLAT-FEE BILLING: COMPETING WITH BIG LAW Allison Speigel of Speigel Nichols Fox LLP on value funds, phase-by-phase pricing, and the communication gap that costs firms clients FOR ALLISON SPEIGEL, the advantage a small firm holds over a national compet- itor is less about resources than respon- siveness. A partner at Speigel Nichols Fox LLP, a commercial litigation boutique in Mississauga, Ontario, Speigel has built a practice designed to move faster, lean on flat-fee billing, and stay closer to clients than the big-firm world she left behind. That posi- tioning is the subject of a panel she will join at the Canadian Legal Summit in Toronto in October 2026, titled "The Size Advantage: How Agile Firms Are Winning in a Client- Driven Market." Speigel Nichols Fox was among the first firms in Canada to offer value-based flat fees across all its litigation matters, a shift Speigel dates to the mid-2010s. The firm sets aside a portion of each bill – on a $10,000 account, she explains, roughly $2,000 – into a notional "value fund." At the end of a matter, the firm can recover anywhere from nothing to double that pool, depending on the result and the client's agreement. The logic, she says, is accountability. "You want to know that your lawyer always has some skin in the game so that they're making the decisions not just because they say it's in your best interest, but because it's also in their financial best interest," she says. Disputes are rare, and the client's view governs. Her line if one balks: "If you don't agree with the value component that I've set, that's fine – we go with yours, but I' ll never work with you again," she says. The model has limits, and Speigel is candid about them. Litigation, unlike a fixed construction bid, hinges on an opponent's choices. "So much of what happens is a reaction to what somebody else is doing, and you really don't have control over the other side," she says. That is why the firm prices matters phase by phase rather than quoting a single fee for the whole case. Her clients' appetite has also surprised her. Despite years of industry talk about moving away from the billable hour – a trend evident in the shifting Canadian legal fee landscape – Speigel found that large corporations often stick with hourly billing out of habit, while individuals are more willing to try flat fees. What clients of all kinds embrace, she says, is the value fund. "They love the idea that … you have money riding on the result. And I think it really helps to create a level of trust that is missing in some of the lawyer-client relationships," she says. The shift is broader than her own practice: in the US, 59 percent of firms billed flat fees either exclusively or alongside an hourly rate in 2024, according to Clio's 2025 Legal Trends Report. "If you don't agree with the value component that I've set, that's fine – we go with yours, but I'll never work with you again"