One case against hourly billing, told in three voices.
Everything we publish makes the same argument at a different depth: personal essays written by the founder about being on the client’s side of the bill, Kynigos publications that translate the economics into plain language, and white papers that carry the formal models and the citations. Start wherever suits you—each layer points to the next.
I paid large retainers. I watched the meter run. I watched a white-shoe firm mangle my own drafts, bill me for the damage, and bill me again to fix what they broke. Then I pushed back. The firm wrote off nearly $3,000.
This is the why-the-firm-exists essay—the experience of being the client is the reason Kynigos runs on flat fees. Read the essay or learn about the firm.
Written personally by the founder—personal perspective, not institutional analysis.
I paid large retainers. I watched the meter run. I watched a white-shoe firm mangle my own drafts, bill me for the damage, and bill me again to fix what they broke. Then I pushed back. The firm wrote off nearly $3,000.
Personal EssayWhat my own divorce taught me about the economics of hourly billing—and why I built a firm that refuses to do it.
Institutional Kynigos analysis—the economics of legal fees in plain language, grounded in the white paper research.
The behavioral economics of why even sophisticated professionals make terrible financial decisions during divorce—and how the billing model makes it worse.
Based on the Kynigos white paper Misaligned Incentives
Kynigos PublicationEconomists have spent fifty years studying how hourly billing quietly works against you. Here's what they found.
Based on the Kynigos white paper Misaligned Incentives
Formal economic analysis with full citations—the foundation the essays and publications stand on.
When you hire an attorney who bills by the hour, you create a classic principal-agent problem: your lawyer has information you don't and an incentive to bill hours you may not need.
Paper 02 · Information EconomicsGeorge Akerlof's 1970 “market for lemons” showed how hidden quality can collapse a market: when buyers can't tell good from bad, the price falls to the level of the bad and the good exits.
More papers are in production—behavioral contract theory and the non-compete trap, and moral hazard in the legal opinion letter.