What happens when you stop billing by the hour

The billable hour has been the default for decades, even though it often puts attorneys and clients at odds. What happens when you rethink that model from the ground up?

Attorney Maddalena Savary, a partner at Frazier Law, PLLC in Scottsdale, Ariz., takes a different approach. Using alternative fee arrangements, she evaluates each case through a structured risk analysis, weighing the potential costs, outcomes and uncertainties before deciding how to move forward. Here, she walks through that process and explains how it brings her firm into closer alignment with clients.  

—Interview by Emily Kelchen, edited by Bianca Prieto

When it comes to billing, most attorneys do what everyone else is doing. Typically, that’s charging for your time. Frazier Law is going in a different direction. What is the motivation behind that? 

Managing Partner Grant Frazier has always pushed us to be more than legal counsel—to be trusted partners in the matters that are most important to our clients. And you can't credibly claim that partnership if your billing model is misaligned with your client's interests. 

Misaligned in what sense? 

The traditional hourly model can create misalignment between firm incentives, attorney workloads and clients' demands for efficiency and cost control. When an attorney is incentivized to log more hours, the client is incentivized to limit communication and second-guess every invoice. That's not a partnership—it's an adversarial dynamic baked into the engagement. 

I assume you are taking on a lot of contingency fee work, then?

What we primarily use are hybrid fee arrangements—a discounted hourly rate paired with a partial contingency fee. In this, the client gets meaningful relief from the full hourly cost burden; the firm participates in the upside. That structure is the core of what we do on the plaintiff side, and pricing it well requires a disciplined, multi-factor analysis that most hourly attorneys simply never have to develop.  

Walk me through the analysis you do in hybrid fee cases. 

The first aspect we assess is the likelihood of success. That means mapping the client's claims, identifying which ones have the strongest probability of prevailing, which generate the most settlement leverage and which carry meaningful weakness or risk. For litigation, we also think deeply about the likely impact of aspects we can't fully control—factual developments, expert testimony, trial credibility determinations. A case that lives or dies on how a jury reads a witness has a different risk profile from one grounded in documentary evidence.  

From there, we work through the damages picture. What does a realistic recovery look like—low, expected and high? How confident are we in collectability if we win? Are there statutory provisions that double or treble damages, or that shift fees to the prevailing party? Those factors can materially change the calculus. We also consider any litigation finance considerations that affect how recovery is prioritized and paid out.

Then we map the procedural path and stress-test it. Every case has inflection points—a notice of claim deadline, a motion to dismiss, a summary judgment, a Daubert challenge, trial, oral argument, amicus coordination—and we assess our risk of each one honestly. We identify any material legal or evidentiary uncertainties that could disproportionately affect the outcome, because those are the places where surprises happen.

Cost and duration are their own analysis. For litigation, will we need experts, and if so, what will they cost—and is the client willing to fund them? For appeals, will there be amicus engagement that helps or hurts? In every case, what is our best estimate of attorney time and out-of-pocket costs through each key milestone and through trial or appeal? Are those costs front-loaded or back-loaded, and how predictable are they? A case with heavy early costs and uncertain later costs prices differently than one with a steady, foreseeable burn rate.

We also think carefully about settlement dynamics. How do we read opposing counsel and the other side's incentives? Does this case look like it resolves early, mid-stream, just before trial, or not at all? That assessment directly affects the shape of the fee structure—a case likely to settle quickly warrants a different arrangement than one that will almost certainly go the distance.

All of that feeds into the final question: is this case a good candidate for a hybrid, flat rate or full contingency arrangement at all, and if so, what structure actually fits? 

And clients are okay with this?

Alternative or hybrid arrangements are used in nearly 35% of our plaintiff-side representations, which tells you the model has moved well past the experimental stage. Our clients are more than okay with it; they are empowered by it. Without a hybrid option, many matters would die unpursued. 

In three years, we've won over $60 million in recoveries in adversarial matters—with several of our largest cases still ongoing. Our attorneys have published more than 10 academic works cited by courts, law reviews, congressional studies and other leading legal resources. We've achieved successful outcomes at every level of the Arizona court system. Those aren't vanity statistics. They are evidence that the model works—that aligning incentives, expanding access and delivering efficiencies aren't just aspirational goals; they translate into outcomes for real clients.

More recently, we have begun assessing a hybrid application to appeals, particularly in plaintiff cases where another firm seeks our assistance on appeal with their trial court contingency matter.  

Does moving away from billing strictly by the hour change how you think about the value you provide?

Hourly billing can, if you're not careful, conflate time spent with value delivered. Those aren't the same. A well-prepared attorney who resolves a complex issue in two hours has delivered more value than one who takes 10 hours to reach the same result—but the billing model doesn't capture that distinction.

At the end of the day, much of this comes back to access to justice. When someone has a meritorious case, we don't want cost to be the reason it never sees the inside of a courtroom. The hybrid model opens a middle path. It expands access to justice for clients and expands the caseload of meritorious matters for the firm.

You're all caught up!

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 Raise the Bar is written and curated by Emily Kelchen and edited by Bianca Prieto.