Do you also stare at the taxi meter while it climbs higher and higher? A flat rate helps me relax and enjoy the ride.
Colin Ley is an asset protection attorney and the creator of the PREP Trust® and Better LLC™. He is also the co-founder of LayRoots (along with with partner in life & business – Shreya Ley)
Being successful in America makes you a target for bogus lawsuits from shameless lawyers. We created an effective, asset protection solution, so you don’t have to worry anymore, happily knowing your family’s future is protected. Get started now by scheduling a free, 30-minute call at livemorecarefree.com.
Transcript:
We are currently at
The Westin.
In Rusutsu, Japan. And today we wanted to go to.
Kutchan.
Because we were gonna eat at a restaurant called.
SOMOZA.
So we had the front desk call us a taxi. So we reserved a taxi.
We did.
To come pick us up the next day. And the front desk told us the cost. It was about.
$100.
Yes. So we thought we were booking a ride.
A flat rate ride.
Yeah, for a flat rate.
‘Cause they had a little chart with rates.
Which is great. Gotta love a flat rate. When the time came, the cab arrived. And we got in and took off.
And we noticed something.
Yes, the driver started the meter running and we started on our journey. Not much we could do about it at that point.
Now that we knew that the meter was running, we couldn’t take our eyes off the meter.
Yeah, we were getting to the same place no matter what. But there’s comfort in knowing the rate you’re gonna pay but there we were driving through the beautiful snowy countryside here in Japan and I was just staring at that meter watching it tick up further and further. And we ended up paying about the same amount that we were told. A little bit more. But one of the issues was, where’d you go Shreya?
I’m here.
Was that the driver got a little bit lost. He didn’t quite know how to get where we were going. We wandered around a bit. I’m sure that ran up the bill.
Yeah.
But then we stopped in the wrong place and at that point, he stopped the meter and I said, let’s just get out, we’ll walk the last 300 yards or so ’cause we didn’t wanna have to start the meter over again and pay again whereas if it were that flat rate, we could have said, “Hey, man.”
This is the wrong stop.
Get us to the place we’re supposed to go. On a side note, we did have a wonderful lunch.
We did.
It was a great afternoon. Great little excursion. The taxi did cost twice as much as the meal did. Thanks, Shreya but it was totally worth it.
It was, it was totally worth it. It was a great experience. And I’m glad we did it.
So the same taxi cab meter dilemma also applies towards lawyers.
As if you didn’t know where it was going.
We could’ve just stopped it there but let’s go deep. I mean, these days, hiring an attorney for something that is routine or something that the attorney does.
Regularly.
Regularly. There should be a flat rate.
Yeah, that’s how we feel about it.
Yeah, there’s a what do you call it, Shreya? A disincentive when you’re billing hourly? I mean, the attorneys that I know who bill hourly, they take notes by hand with a pen and paper instead of typing because it’s gonna take longer so they charge more. But using.
They sit there and they ponder for a while about what to do next.
So the flat rate incentivizes the attorney to make things more efficient for himself. It makes clients and people not afraid to call their attorney because they’re not gonna get a bill.
That’s the biggest thing for us is I want people to call us, not wait until something is dire before being like crap, I have to call the attorney.
Oh, we’re getting run over.
Yeah, we’re getting run over.
Billing by the hour or by the minute can end up creating an adversarial relationship between attorney and client. What might happen is that because of the hourly billing, wanting to avoid having the bill go up, you end up getting dropped off 300 yards from the place you actually wanted to be and you end up having to suffer slogging through the snow in inappropriate shoes. Just wandering around here round the sign. Buried in the snow.
Two feet of snow.
Oh look out. It’s the walk of shame.
I see it. I see its roof I think. Look at these icicles.
