IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ete/msiper/486733.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

What clients want: Choices between lawyers' offerings

Author

Listed:
  • Flóra Felső
  • Sander Onderstal
  • Jo Seldeslachts

Abstract

We analyze a client's choice of contract in auctions where Dutch law firms compete for cases. The distinguishing feature is that lawyers may submit bids with any fee arrangement they prefer: an hourly rate, a fixed fee or a "mixed fee", which is a time-capped fixed fee plus an hourly rate for any additional hours should the case take longer than expected. This format of selling legal services is unusual in that it both forces lawyers to compete directly against each other and allows clients to easily compare these dierent oers. We estimate a choice model for clients and find robust evidence that hourly rate bids are a client's least-preferred choice. Our findings tentatively contradict lawyers' often made argument that hourly rates are in a client's best interest.

Suggested Citation

  • Flóra Felső & Sander Onderstal & Jo Seldeslachts, 2015. "What clients want: Choices between lawyers' offerings," Working Papers of Department of Management, Strategy and Innovation, Leuven 486733, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Management, Strategy and Innovation, Leuven.
  • Handle: RePEc:ete:msiper:486733
    Note: paper number MSI_1504
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://lirias.kuleuven.be/retrieve/306454
    File Function: MSI_1504
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Farrell, Joseph & Klemperer, Paul, 2007. "Coordination and Lock-In: Competition with Switching Costs and Network Effects," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: Mark Armstrong & Robert Porter (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 31, pages 1967-2072, Elsevier.
    2. Ewerhart, Christian & Fieseler, Karsten, 2003. "Procurement Auctions and Unit-Price Contracts," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 34(3), pages 569-581, Autumn.
    3. Train,Kenneth E., 2009. "Discrete Choice Methods with Simulation," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521766555, September.
    4. White,Halbert, 1996. "Estimation, Inference and Specification Analysis," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521574464, September.
    5. Dana, James D, Jr & Spier, Kathryn E, 1993. "Expertise and Contingent Fees: The Role of Asymmetric Information in Attorney Compensation," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 9(2), pages 349-367, October.
    6. Mas-Colell, Andreu & Whinston, Michael D. & Green, Jerry R., 1995. "Microeconomic Theory," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195102680.
    7. Maheshri, Vikram & Winston, Clifford, 2014. "An exploratory study of the pricing of legal services," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(S), pages 169-173.
    8. J. Scott Long & Jeremy Freese, 2006. "Regression Models for Categorical Dependent Variables using Stata, 2nd Edition," Stata Press books, StataCorp LP, edition 2, number long2, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Flóra Felső & Sander Onderstal & Jo Seldeslachts, 2022. "The Pricing Structure of Legal Services: Do Lawyers Offer What Clients Want?," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 61(2), pages 123-148, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Erik Stam & Roy Thurik & Peter van der Zwan, 2010. "Entrepreneurial exit in real and imagined markets," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 19(4), pages 1109-1139, August.
    2. Michelsen, Carl Christian & Madlener, Reinhard, 2016. "Switching from fossil fuel to renewables in residential heating systems: An empirical study of homeowners' decisions in Germany," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 95-105.
    3. Luisa Dressler & Stefan Weiergraeber, 2023. "Alert the Inert? Switching Costs and Limited Awareness in Retail Electricity Markets," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(1), pages 74-116, February.
    4. Axel C. Mühlbacher & Anika Kaczynski & Peter Zweifel & F. Reed Johnson, 2016. "Experimental measurement of preferences in health and healthcare using best-worst scaling: an overview," Health Economics Review, Springer, vol. 6(1), pages 1-14, December.
    5. Christian Jaag & Urs Trinkner, 2011. "A General Framework for Regulation and Liberalization in Network Industries," Chapters, in: Matthias Finger & Rolf W. Künneke (ed.), International Handbook of Network Industries, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Qiu, Feng & Goodwin, Barry K. & Gervais, Jean-Philippe, 2011. "An Empirical Investigation of the Linkages between Government Payments and Farmland Leasing Arrangements," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 36(3), pages 1-16.
    7. David Roodman, 2009. "Estimating Fully Observed Recursive Mixed-Process Models with cmp," Working Papers 168, Center for Global Development.
    8. Kasy, Maximilian, 2023. "The Political Economy of AI: Towards Democratic Control of the Means of Prediction," SocArXiv x7pcy, Center for Open Science.
    9. Kate Ho & Joseph Hogan & Fiona Scott Morton, 2017. "The impact of consumer inattention on insurer pricing in the Medicare Part D program," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 48(4), pages 877-905, December.
    10. Kosenius, Anna-Kaisa, 2013. "Preference discontinuity in choice experiment: Determinants and implications," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 138-145.
    11. Paha, Johannes & Rompf, Dirk & Warnecke, Christiane, 2013. "Customer choice patterns in passenger rail competition," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 209-227.
    12. Christensen, Finn & Cornwell, Christopher R., 2018. "A strong correspondence principle for smooth, monotone environments," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 15-24.
    13. Barone, Guglielmo & Felici, Roberto & Pagnini, Marcello, 2011. "Switching costs in local credit markets," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 694-704.
    14. Czajkowski, Mikołaj & Sobolewski, Maciej, 2016. "How much do switching costs and local network effects contribute to consumer lock-in in mobile telephony?," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(9), pages 855-869.
    15. Matthew J. Baker, 2023. "Using bayesmixedlogit and bayesmixedlogitwtp in Stata," Papers 2302.01775, arXiv.org.
    16. Nakamura, A., 2011. "Estimating switching costs after introducing Fixed-Mobile Convergence in Japan," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 59-71, March.
    17. Jonathan Corcoran & Alessandra Faggian & Philip Mccann, 2010. "Human Capital in Remote and Rural Australia: The Role of Graduate Migration," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(2), pages 192-220, June.
    18. Di Wang & Robert J. Weiner & Quan Li & Srividya Jandhyala, 2021. "Leviathan as foreign investor: Geopolitics and sovereign wealth funds," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 52(7), pages 1238-1255, September.
    19. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:30:y:2010:i:1:p:437-449 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Paolo Delle Site & André de Palma & Karim Kilani, 2021. "Consumers’ welfare and compensating variation: survey and mode choice application," THEMA Working Papers 2021-11, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    21. Jesse Rothstein & Albert Yoon, 2024. "Rankings without U.S. News: A revealed preference approach to evaluating law schools," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 21(2), pages 279-336, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Lawyers' fee arrangements; clients' choices; discrete choice models;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C25 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Discrete Regression and Qualitative Choice Models; Discrete Regressors; Proportions; Probabilities
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • K10 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - General (Constitutional Law)
    • K40 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ete:msiper:486733. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: library EBIB (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://feb.kuleuven.be/MSI .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.