“Don’t come to me with a problem, come to me with a solution.”
That’s solid business advice. But when it comes to legal pricing, it’s advice that’s often ignored. Year after year, there is endless chatter about the problem of continuous law firm rate hikes.
Today, Jordan Weinstein, PERSUIT’s VP of Data and Growth (and former Chief Data Officer for Legal at Goldman Sachs), shares a solution: Fixed fees.
Contrary to what you might think, fixed fees can make both firms and clients happy, and Jordan brought the data to back it up.
Cheers,
-Jim
Jim Delkousis
Founder & CEO
Jim Delkousis
Founder & CEO
Jordan here. Let’s get into legal pricing — the topic most people avoid at parties.
My conversation starter of, “You negotiate your rates this year already?” just doesn’t have the same effect it used to.
I’m now leading with: “What’s the going fixed fee for defending a deposition in a single plaintiff Termination Employment Law matter in Ohio?”
It kills. Because I have the data to back it up — we’ve analyzed over 30,000 law firm proposals on PERSUIT, most of which use fixed fees.
When we looked at year-over-year pricing trends for key activities, we found some surprising patterns — ones that don’t align with all the noise about rate hikes.
Let’s dive in.
🤔 The unprofitable FinServ client
“I hate working for this client. Every one of their matters I work on, I’m forced to bill at the lowest rate compared to every other client I have.”
I remember this conversation clearly with a senior litigation partner at my old firm. He was talking about a global financial giant.
Big banks tend to have all the leverage. In his case, they’d locked in very low rates well beyond the usual 2-3 year term — leaving top lawyers reluctant to take on the work and Finance and Pricing teams trying to make the numbers work.
Sound familiar? Well, there’s now a twist.
We pulled the median fixed fee price for a deposition, broken down by client sector. If you’re assuming FinServ came in near the bottom — too cost-sensitive, too rigid — you’re not alone… and you’re not correct.
The truth? FinServ topped the list — kind of by a lot.
That’s right — the highest median deposition fee across sectors belongs to the very industry everyone says squeezes the most.
Not Healthcare. Not Tech. FinServ.
“Jordan, that’s cool — but have you considered that FinServ matters are more complex by nature? Maybe that’s why these activities cost more.”
Maybe.
But Pharma companies — especially those on PERSUIT — handle highly complex matters too. In fact, they have many of the largest matters on the platform.
So yes, let’s acknowledge the nuance — one deposition is rarely like another. But this is median data across thousands of matters and proposals. So no, complexity alone doesn’t explain it.
What the signal tells me is this: for firms that aren't getting the rate increases they want or need, consider going with a Fixed Fee — it might just help you achieve your goal and make your client happier in the process.
Maybe the move isn’t to avoid the work nor spend months negotiating those rates — but to reframe the model.
📉 Flatlining AFA prices for core activities
You’ve seen the headlines: “Lawyer Rates Soar Above Inflation Again” — backed by data showing partner rates up X%, associate rates up Y%, and so on.
But what if we look at pricing through the AFA lens?
We pulled the median fixed fee pricing for some key cost-driving activities:
Draft / File Answer
Prepare Initial Disclosures
Fact Witness Prep
Fact Deposition
Expert Deposition
Motion to Dismiss
Here’s what we found: these prices doubled from 2021 to 2023… and then flatlined.
From 2024 → 2025 (YTD), the pricing for these moved less than ±5% — well below inflation.
And before you chalk this up to a small sample size:
This is based on 594 matters with proposals from 189 service providers.
So what’s going on? More reliance on downstream resources? Margin made up in other phases? Clients simply unwilling to move? Technology improvements or dare I say… AI impacting these workstreams?
Hypotheses abound — but the trend holds. And we’d love to hear your take.
📊 How can you use this data?
Up until now, you’d be forgiven for not diving into AFAs or fixed fee arrangements. There just wasn’t a ton of reliable data to inform those decisions.
But there is way more evidence now, including data from more than 30,000 proposals, across 9,000 unique matters, and 3,000 firms across the PERSUIT platform.
And because this type of data wasn’t readily available, it was just assumed that fixed fees were... too hard to do well, or too risky or won't be profitable and thus a non-starter for law firms.
But as we’re seeing, this isn’t actually the case, and that gives clients and firms a new opportunity to re-imagine their relationships.
It’s a good conversation starter at parties, at least.
What sets the most successful firms apart? They collaborate — across business development, pricing, project management, and legal teams — to deliver proposals clients want and expect.
Join us for this webinar with Josh Jennings, Senior Manager of Pitches and Pursuits at Hogan Lovells, for insight into how one of the world’s leading firms is using PERSUIT to strengthen client partnerships.
You’ll learn:
How Hogan Lovells structured internal teams for success
Law firm feedback to make collaboration even stronger
Why clients are moving to PERSUIT — and what that means for law firms
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