BigHand's 2025 Pricing and Budgeting Survey

BigHand's 2025 Pricing and Budgeting Survey is a worthwhile read, and timely for our current Legal Mini-MBA delegates who are wrapping up our lesson on Pricing this week!

I normally expect the march of progress to head in one direction in these sorts of surveys, but there's one area in particular that stands out...

Clients want greater visibility over fees (p8), but firms are offering less of it (p16)

I can't help but (perhaps unfairly) draw a link between less visibility here with the impact of AI on fees (p33), particularly when you consider that only a third of fees are AFAs of one type or another (pp9-11)

I think the implication is that AI is impacting fees, but firms are resisting/struggling to offer AFAs and so are hiding the impact on hourly rates by reducing transparency in reporting on budgets/estimates etc

Which is... an approach...

The potential impact of AI on pricing has been signposted for a couple of years now. To now hide that impact feels shortsighted and likely damaging to the broader client relationship, particularly where 75% + of firms are expecting greater client demands for more value based pricing or AFA (p12), as well as greater transparency

I'd expect firms that can get a grip on this issue to steal a march on their competitors. I don't think that necessarily means offering lower fees to win work -

Just offering clearer fees

Link to the survey:

https://www.bighand.com/en-gb/resources/whitepapers/2025-legal-pricing-and-budgeting-report/

BigHand 2025 Pricing and Budgeting Survey