Ex-BigLaw Attorneys Profit at Smaller Firm via Flexible Fees & Eat-What-You-Kill Comp
A willingness to be flexible about hourly billing rates and an eat-what-you-kill compensation structure has proven profitable for former BigLaw attorneys now practicing in the “Philadelphia” office of Chamberlain Hrdlicka.
The office, which actually is located in Conshohocken, Pa., in the Philadelphia suburbs, resulted from a parting of the ways between partners Philip Karter and Herbert Odell and their former Washington, D.C.-based firm, Miller & Chevalier, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
The two joined Houston-based Chamberlain, which has only about 100 lawyers and a similar focus on tax practice, in 2007, after their plea for permission to offer flexible fees to clients fell on deaf ears. Meanwhile, Miller & Chevalier indicated that it was thinking about closing the Conshohocken office, the newspaper says.
As a Chamberlain office, the group has done well. Partners, who are compensated based on the business they bring into the firm, average about $670,000 annually.
“We loved living here and had no desire to move,” says the 53-year-old Karter, who serves as managing partner of the Conshohocken office. “Our clients didn’t care whether we were in a town with a name they couldn’t pronounce.”
Although it continues to emphasize its traditional tax focus, the office also is expanding its practice to emphasize intellectual property, regulatory and trusts and estates.
Marianna Dyson, who chairs the Miller & Chevalier executive committee, says her firm affiliated with the Conshohocken group because of their tax expertise rather than a desire to have an office there. Miller & Chevalier respected Karter and Odell’s decision to move in another direction and wishes them the best, she tells the Inquirer.
