A fixed fee is a single price agreed before work begins for a defined scope of legal or advisory work, with the price unchanged regardless of how long the work takes. Fixed-fee structures in M&A legal work are uncommon among Australian full-service firms, but increasingly offered by specialist boutiques operating in defined deal brackets.
Fixed fees transfer the risk of complexity from the client to the firm, which means the firm must scope accurately at the outset. They also remove the misalignment between firm revenue and deal duration that hourly billing creates.