Pricing Your Expertise as a Consultant Lawyer

Understanding value-based pricing for legal consultancy

One of the biggest mindset shifts for any consultant lawyer is realising that you are no longer simply a fee-earner; you are a business in your own right.

That means your pricing is not just a line on an invoice, but a strategic decision that shapes your lifestyle, client base, and long-term sustainability.

Under-pricing may win you work in the short term, but it can quickly lead to exhaustion, resentment and a practice that relies on volume rather than value. Over-pricing without a clear value story can leave you frustrated by lost opportunities.

Striking the right balance requires you to think differently about what clients are really buying from you – and to understand the regulatory context you operate in as a solicitor.

Start with your value, not your cost. Clients rarely care how many minutes it takes you to review a contract; they care about avoiding risk, unlocking deals, and gaining peace of mind.

As an experienced consultant, you may be able to deliver outcomes in a fraction of the time it would take a less senior lawyer, precisely because you have spent years developing pattern-recognition and judgement.

Hourly billing can perversely penalise that efficiency. Thinking in terms of value-based pricing – where your fees reflect the importance and impact of your work, as well as the time involved – helps you move away from the mindset of “selling hours” and towards “selling solutions.”

Instead of defaulting to vague hourly ranges, consider offering illustrative examples: what a typical matter costs, what factors might increase or decrease fees, and how you handle scope changes. This openness builds trust and reduces the risk of fee disputes later on.

Designing fee structures that support freedom and growth

Once you accept that you are selling outcomes rather than hours, the question becomes: how do you turn that into a coherent fee structure?

The goal is not a single perfect price list, but a small, intentional menu of ways clients can buy your expertise. Start by mapping your common matter types and categorising them into three buckets: highly repeatable work with predictable scope; semi-structured work with known phases; and highly bespoke, complex matters.

Each bucket lends itself to different pricing approaches. Repeatable work – for example, standard commercial contract reviews or straightforward policy drafting – is typically best suited to fixed fees or narrow price ranges. Semi-structured projects, such as a suite of documents for a new business or a discrete workplace investigation, may be priced using phase-based fees.

Complex matters that are inherently uncertain might still involve hourly billing, but with a clear estimate, caps, or blended models so clients are not writing a blank cheque. For fixed-fee or value-based work, data is your ally.

Look back at historic files (from your employed practice if necessary) and estimate how much focused time each type of matter really takes at your current level of efficiency. Add realistic allowances for communication, admin, and unexpected wrinkles, then apply your target effective hourly rate to arrive at a baseline fee. From there, consider the value to the client: solving a contract issue that protects a multimillion-pound deal may justify a premium above the time-based calculation.

As a consultant, your fee structures should also support the lifestyle you are designing. If you want to avoid evenings and weekends, consider premium pricing for genuine out-of-hours work and build in rush fees for last-minute instructions.

Retainer-style arrangements – for example, a monthly fee for a set number of hours or priority response times – can smooth cash flow and reduce the stress of constantly hunting for the next instruction. Be deliberate about what is and is not included in each package.

A “general counsel on demand” offering might include email and phone advice, document review up to a certain complexity, and quarterly strategy calls, but exclude large projects such as full-scale litigation or corporate transactions, which would be separately scoped and priced.

Communicating fees confidently and handling pushback

Even the best-designed fee structure only works if you communicate it clearly and stand behind it when challenged. Many lawyers were trained in environments where fees were almost apologised for, discussed at the last minute or buried in dense terms of business.

As a consultant, you can take a different approach: make pricing part of an open, collaborative conversation about value from the outset. When clients push back – for example, asking for discounts, or comparing you to much lower quotes – it helps to return to outcomes.

Ask what they are really trying to achieve and what the cost of getting it wrong might be. If their budget is genuinely lower than your proposal, consider whether you can narrow the scope, stage the work, or offer a different product rather than simply cutting your price. It is perfectly acceptable to say no to work that is not commercially viable.

Over time, you will develop phrases that feel authentic to you, such as “I’ve priced this to cover the time and senior-level attention needed to do it properly” or “If we reduced the fee to that level, I would need to remove X and Y from the scope so I can maintain quality.”

Confidence also comes from consistency. Decide your minimum engagement fee, standard rates and discount policies in advance and document them. That way, when you are in conversation with a potential client, you are not negotiating from a place of anxiety or improvisation.

Finally, review your pricing at least annually in light of inflation, increased experience and demand. Many consultant lawyers leave their rates unchanged for years, effectively giving themselves a pay cut. By treating pricing as an ongoing strategic discipline – grounded in data, aligned with SRA expectations and communicated with clarity – you protect both your income and the sustainability of the flexible, entrepreneurial career you set out to build.