Matthew Burgess shares how he transitioned away from the billable hour early in his career to offer fixed fees, eventually evolving to subscriptions for estate planning clients. Burgess cautions lawyers that subscription models with high client service have limits on scalability, so value pricing may work better. However, he sees the power of subscription for building trust and aligning incentives.
Burgess explains his firm's specialized, referral-only business model serving other firms' clients, allowing them to scale through professional advisors instead of direct-to-consumer marketing. He believes lawyers must hyper-specialize to remain profitable in an age of technology disruption and legal services democratization. Burgess also discusses insights on tiering subscription services at 10x the value, not simply 5x the price, and offering annual client "checkups" as valuable touchpoints.
On the tech side, Burgess shares his firm's journey into custom platforms but suggests configurable solutions work better for most. He previews excitement about PatternBuilder in NetDocuments with AI potential to automate millions of words of firm content. Burgess concludes lawyers who grasp subscription business models and AI's power to scale will build the legal businesses of the future.
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(60) Tax, Estate and Succession Planning + Subscriptions with Matthew Burgess of View Legal