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CCCA_V4No1_Alt Fees-FIN.qxd:CCCA_V1No1_DriversSeat-FIN.qxd 2/3/10 1:27 PM Page 28 Feature Jane Steinberg players to examine whether it’s a model Former Managing Partner Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP that can be emulated by other corporate Ottawa clients and outside counsel. A ‘basic math problem’ Hugh Christie positively beams when he discusses Gowlings’ unique arrangement with Cisco. “Law firms have to be cre- ative and tailor arrangements to suit their client’s interests,” says Christie, a partner in Gowlings’Toronto office and leader of the firm’s employment and labour law practice group. About three years ago, Roxane Marenberg, Cisco System’s director of employment legal services, floated a pro- posal to her peers at Gowlings to imple- ment a monthly fixed-fee arrangement, plus a bonus for favourable results for employment and labour legal advice. “I see hourly billing as a basic math prob- lem: hours worked times hourly rates with no incentive to be solutions-driven or strengthen relationships between client and firm,” Marenberg says. Beyond con- trolling costs,Marenberg continues,“fixed fees have provided certainty and taken the guesswork out of figuring out how much a matter will cost.” Pressuring outside counsel to accept AFAs has been a key component in the campaign by Cisco Systems’ general counsel Mark Chandler to curb legal costs and his crusade against the billable hour. Indeed, Chandler has publicly decried the billable hour as “the last vestige of the medieval guild system to survive into the 21st century.” No arm-twisting was necessary to get Gowlings to agree to a monthly flat-fee arrangement, however. “The view was, let’s take a run at it and after the first year we can re-evaluate. …if the fee is really out of whack, we can deal with it at the end of the year,”says Christie,who enthu- siastically embraced the new arrangement. “Going in, we recognized that we were embarking upon a new relationship and MIKE PINDER there might be some glitches,” Marenberg 28 CCCA Canadian Corporate Counsel Association SPRING 2010