Earn what you're worth, without working more hours
“You have to ask, because no one is going to just give you what you deserve.”
A few years ago, I acted for a group of individuals exiting a business. The main contact argued me down on my fees, and I agreed. I charged £15,000 for the whole matter. I later found out that my opposition, who I knew had a similar level of experience as me, charged £60,000 for effectively the same job, when I am sure that I had done more of the hand-holding. When I learned this, I felt sick: I had charged just a quarter of what my opposition had charged and I know I’d done a great job.
We learn the hard way. And then, sometimes, we get a session like the one we had with Matthew Dashper-Hughes, and we realise there might be a faster route.
Matthew is Global Talent Director at gunnercooke, an executive coach, and the author of Show Me the Money! - a book about how professionals can earn in line with the value they actually deliver. He also happens to be a colleague of mine, and I’ve been keen to get him in front of FLC members. You can find him on LinkedIn.
The least you will accept is the most you will get
This is Matthew's central rule, and it comes back to something most of us would rather not think about for too long: the stories we tell ourselves about what we are worth. He talked about how the problem often begins with the internal backing track that is running before you even open your mouth, the one that says, ‘that’s a lot of money, they’ll probably say no, maybe I’ll just start a bit lower.’ And then you do. And the client gets a price that reflects your anxiety rather than your value.
Matthew pointed out that a lot of this goes back further than we might expect, to the first time we were aware of money as a concept, and the emotions that were attached to it. His own was his mother asking his father how much petrol he had put in the car, in a tone that made clear the answer was going to be wrong. Children absorb these moments, and we carry them into fee conversations thirty years later.
Clients never instruct you because they have a legal problem
Matthew spent twenty-five years on the client side, and he made a very astute observation: he never, ever instructed a lawyer because he had a legal problem. He instructed lawyers because he had a business problem, and the law might be part of the solution. That reframe matters enormously, because it changes where the value conversation is positioned.
His advice was to start every new engagement with what he calls a discovery conversation: ask the client permission to ask deep questions, find out what is really at stake, and get them to articulate the cost to them if things go wrong, or the upside if you get it right. When those numbers come out of their mouths, they believe them. And when your fee comes in later, and it is a fraction of the risk they have just described, it looks like exactly what it is: an investment.
'That's expensive' is not a question
Matthew helpfully gave us advice on what to do when a client says your fees are expensive. Most of us hear a question mark on the end of that statement, and we rush to answer it. We start justifying, explaining, possibly discounting before anyone has asked us to. The moment you do that, he said, your body language tells them the price needs justifying, which means you are not worth what you are charging.
His suggestion was to say nothing. Embrace the silence. The client will fill it, and what they say next will tell you what is actually going on. If they then ask whether anything can be done on price, he recommends a brief pause and a question: ‘When you say expensive, it sounds like there’s something else going on, would you mind sharing what that is?’ He called it stroke, repeat, reverse: acknowledge what they said, reflect their words back, and return the question. It is a technique, he admitted, and it feels deeply unnatural at first. But then so did most things that are now second nature.
The number is a message
Matthew had a useful piece of advice on how to structure your fee if you are doing fixed pricing: make it a specific, non-round number. Not £10,000, but £10,545. The round number implies you made it up and signals that the negotiating room is in the thousands. A precise number signals calculation, and it anchors any discussion about movement in the tens or the decimal points. He also said the first number mentioned in any fee conversation acts as a cognitive anchor for everything that follows, which is why you want to establish the client’s own numbers, the cost of the problem or the value of the gain, before you ever say yours.
If they go cheaper, there is a reason
One of our members shared, during the Q&A, that a pitch she had been part of that morning had come back with a counter from a competitor at roughly half the price. Matthew’s advice was, if someone tells you they have found a cheaper option, ask them why they are telling you. If the cheaper firm was the obvious choice, they would have gone. The fact that they are telling you is a negotiation, and it means there is something they value about you that the cheaper option does not offer. He added that if they win something on price, they will always lose it on price. You have reduced it to a transaction.
A note from me
I set up this session partly because fees and billing is something we have talked about repeatedly in FLC, in roundtables, in our WhatsApp group and in direct messages, and the same patterns keep coming up. We know our value intellectually. We just don’t always behave as though we do. I include myself in that entirely. As Matthew said, the person you are really negotiating against is yourself, not the client.
If you want to learn more about this, I highly recommend Matthew’s book, Show Me the Money! There aren’t many books aimed at pricing specifically for professionals, especially lawyers. This one is short and definitely worth your time.
Sessions like this one are part of what Female Lawyers’ Club members get access to, alongside the replays, the resources, and a community of senior lawyers who are thinking about exactly these questions. If you’re not already a member, you can find out more and join at femalelawyersclub.com.
Enjoy the rest of your week.
Rachel