Some Excellent Posts by Chris Marston on Value Pricing and Scope

Chris Marston, CEO of Exemplar Law Partners and VeraSage Fellow, has some excellent posts over at his blog, Inside the Firm of the Future.

His January 1, 2007 post, You Have to Know How A JibJab Works Before You Can Fix A Broken JibJab! is a compelling exposition of why the legal profession is failing to execute Value Pricing.

His next post from January 8, 2007, SCOPE: It's Not Just A Mouthwash! It's What You Do When You Use Fixed Pricing! is one of the best explanations I have read on the importance of defining scope, managing and understanding customer expectations. Scope creep is the number one killer of Fixed Price Agreements, and the billable hour has let professionals become quite lazy about this important discipline.

After all, with the billable hour, who has to care about defining scope? Just pick up the file and plug in the hours. This is one of the Seven Deadly Sins in the Professional Knowledge Firm. Just as pricing needs to become a core competency within PKFs, so does project management. VeraSage Senior Fellow Ed Kless is an expert on this topic, so I'm sure we will be seeing more posts relating to this important subject in the future.

Chris' post from January 15, 2007, Time-Based Accounting is Behavior Modifying to the Detriment of Profits, is another fantastic exposition on how endemic Karl Marx's labor theory of value is in the legal profession, to the detriment of not only profits, but quality of life.

On a more whimsical tone, his post from January 23, 2007 links the billable hour to cancer. As one who believes that ridicule and humor is sometimes far more effective than logic, I commend Chris for making fun of the billable hour. It's about time. Aren't people bored with this method yet?

Great work, Chris, keep it up!