New York firm interrogates legal fees

After spending 18 years litigating legal bills for insurance companies, David Paige has a finely tuned sensibility for finding questionable legal charges. And now he is putting those skills to use in his own firm, Sterling Analytics, to advise companies on whether their legal bills are fair. A key part of the advice provided by the three-year old Sterling Analytics is making the distinction between legitimate expenses and overhead. Paige also investigates the kind of work for which lawyers are billing, and whether the work is assigned to a high-priced lawyer when it could be competently handled by a paralegal or secretary. Paige says that the big law model is built around the needs of the firm, rather than those of the client: “This structure is needed to support the overhead of these large firms, and the expectation of the partners of how much money they’re going to make.”

New York firm interrogates legal fees blogs.forbes.com Thu, May 12, 2011