Mcfarlin & Geurts Client Suite


McFarlin & Geurts Client Suite is the next generation of legal services for our business clients. For one monthly flat fee, our business clients get unlimited legal advice, document review services, and employment law supervision. Our Client Suite does not include litigation or large scale transactional work, however, if those needs do arise, we offer our Client Suite client's discounted rates for any legal matter.
Client Suite delivers strategic guidance and practical business solutions to address client's employment, commercial, corporate, real estate and technology law needs. Regardless of business structure or organization size, every client seeks the same legal product: high quality legal advice, at a reasonable and predictable price. Client Suite provides clients with vital corporate legal services replicating the procedures, methodology, and style of an in-house legal department.
OUR CLIENT SUITE APPROACH:

The Client Suite program makes sense for any business that does not have in-house counsel, wants to scale back in-house counsel hours and responsibilities, or is considering moving away from the in-house counsel model altogether. We can effectively manage risk for your business, and address any type of legal matters that may arise, without the high overhead of in-house counsel. Legal risks are unavoidable aspects of doing business today, but legal liabilities don’t have to be.

Risks can be managed and minimized so that your business can avoid the liabilities resulting from them. The first step is to identify the risks. To do so, a representative from your business will sit down with one of our Client Suite attorneys and discuss your industry in general, your employment situation, and your strategy for growth going forward. Our approach to minimizing risk for your business going forward has three important components.

1. We do a complete audit and review of your operations, vendor and supplier relationships, customer contracts, corporate governance, regulatory compliance, and employee or contractor arrangements.
2. We analyze your industry and growth patterns; specifically, we anticipate where your business growth will come from, which suppliers and vendors will be most critical, and where new customers, or which existing customers, will expand.
3. We make thoughtful and insightful recommendations for your business to protect and preserve what you have built and to meet the ever changing business challenges that will arise in the future with as little risk and expose as possible.
Once we identify the issues and risks that may confront your business in the future, we can look for the solutions to address them now, and avoid legal entanglements in the future. Unfortunately, some legal challenges are unavoidable, if such a litigation issues does arise, we offer our Client Suite clients a 20% discount from our normal hourly rates. We feel so confident that our preparation and insight during the audit phase of our representation will minimize your exposure and shorten the duration of any litigation that we will work to dispose of the matter at a substantial discount to our normal hourly fee structure.
CLIENT SUITE BACKGROUND :

For at least 50 years the billable hour has been the dominant feature of the legal profession. Despised yet ubiquitous, the billable hour is the cockroach of the legal world. The basic flaw of the billable hour, is that it puts the financial incentives for lawyers in the wrong place. Back in a more genteel age, grouse many lawyers, the cost of legal services was determined not by the amount of time a lawyer spent on a matter but on the value he delivered to the client. That model quickly broke down when the legal profession became a business. Accordingly, the “client value” model was replaced by a time-based metric – which may encourage firms to overstaff matters, provide unnecessary and marginally useful services, and draw out cases that might be brought to a swifter conclusion. This pricing model follows the production costs instead of following the needs of the buyer.

This far-reaching and historically pervasive problem was the impetus for the McFarlin & Geurts Client Suite. We wanted to provide our important business clients with an alternative that efficiently aligns the interests of the firm with the interests of the clients. To do so, we offer our clients a fixed flat fee for all legal services and advice that may be required (with some limited exclusions). This model turns an unpredictable and variable cost into a fixed cost for your business.

Most firms are stubbornly committed to this business model that does not meet their client’s desires for better efficiency and predictable charges. McFarlin & Geurts Client Suite embraces an alternative approach. We are concerned less with the short term, and much more with developing long-term client relationships to grow our own business along with our client’s businesses. Most lawyers can’t see past their next $1,000.00, we take a completely different approach, which gives us a great competitive advantage in the legal services marketplace. We haven’t killed the billable hour completely, but we’re getting closer.
CLIENT SUITE LITIGATION OR OTHER HOURLY WORK:

One of the few services excluded from our Client Suite is litigation. Litigation is sometimes unavoidable, and not the result of any wrongdoing, but simply a money-grab by desperate Plaintiffs and their attorneys. There is no way for us to entirely prevent litigation, however, in instances of litigation, we preserve the “incentive alignment” model and undertake representation on behalf of our Client Suite business clients at a 20% discount, across the board, from our normal hourly rate. This model gives our firm the same incentive as your business…to get the matter resolved as quickly and efficiently as possible for you.

Of course, a discounted rate does not mean discounted service. It’s just the opposite in fact. We see a litigation matter as an opportunity to demonstrate to our business client the true value of our firm. We know that when the business client walks away from a threatening and potentially destructive lawsuit with minimal business interruption and cost, they become a Client Suite client believer. This strengthens the bond and solidifies the relationship between our firm and your business for the long term.
CLIENT SUITE RISK MANAGEMENT:
As we have seen, economically difficult times magnify business vulnerabilities. The current economic and financial crisis has business owners and executives concerned about their company’s crucial risk management practices and procedures. Recently, even prestigious and well established businesses have seen their own demise due to key failures in risk management. Now, more than ever, there is an essential need to control and attend to possible risks. The current economic environment has created tremendous opportunities as many, once untouchable, industry titans have fallen.
This state of economic affairs, and how it developed, leaves businesses with not only opportunities, but important guidance as well. It is clear that gaps in risk management, no matter how insignificant they may seem, have the potential to devastate companies. At the same time, a robust focus on risk management practices strengthens a business and provides a substantial competitive edge over its competition facing the same challenges. Now is the time to reassess.
McFarlin & Geurts Client Suite Risk Management Assessment team is ready to assist in just doing that. The identification and consideration of risks in a business is something that requires a customized approach. Our team takes the time to learn about your business, review your operations, identify sources of liability, and address these exposures.