Source: Bloomberg Law
Fennemore, with its fifth combination this year, aims to gain expertise from the four-lawyer Lucent Law on flat fees. Fennemore is also partnering with OpenAI, the developer of the generative AI chatbot ChatGPT, to make its work and lawyers more efficient.
“We are pushing in on alternative fees,” James Goodnow, chief executive of Fennemore, said in an interview. “Those that don’t are missing the boat. As you have these great new technologies that drive efficiencies, the question is, how do you price that?”
Lucent Law has developed flat-fee pricing models for business formations, real estate purchase and sale agreements, and estate planning matters, firm co-founder Brett Sullivan said. Fennemore will “take what we’ve built at Lucent Law and see it expand and grow and add value,” he said.
Fennemore will use OpenAI’s technology to provide lawyers with better search capabilities for internal data, including accounting, document management, and timekeeping, Goodnow said. No client data will be shared with OpenAI, and the firm’s internal data won’t be used for training AI models, he said.
Law firms have struggled to adopt alternative fees, partly due to concerns over how accurately they can forecast budgets for individual matters. Fennemore will view its return on the AI investment by how much “non-billable time” is eliminated for lawyers and how profit margins from alternative fees compare with hourly work, Goodnow said.
Read the full article: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/legal-ops-and-tech/fennemores-lucent-merger-brings-ai-driven-push-into-flat-fees
