Jay Shepherd is truly a rebel among lawyers.

Shepherd famously doesn’t charge clients by the hour. He’s a prolific blogger and tweeter. He’s never worked for a big firm. And he thinks that sometimes, as a group, lawyers suck.

“The irony is I’m married to a big-firm lawyer, and all my friends are lawyers,” said Shepherd, 42. “I know a lot of great lawyers. But, as a group, lawyers just don’t get business.”

Instead of working as a big-firm associate after attending Boston College Law School, Shepherd took a job at a small employment-law boutique. Four years later, he launched the Shepherd Law Group, an employment-law firm in Boston. Shepherd, who considers himself a businessman before he thinks of himself as a lawyer, charged his clients by the hour in the beginning. But it didn’t feel right.

“I always hated tracking my time,” said Shepherd, who lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with his wife and two daughters. “Frankly, I didn’t feel like I was doing assembly-line stuff. We’re supposed to be knowledge workers. The idea of keeping track of six-minute intervals is absurd.”

With his decision three years ago to drop the billable-hour method in favor of fixed fees, Shepherd instantly became known as a contrarian among attorneys. Despite the limited resources at his four-attorney firm, Shepherd has gained national recognition as an outspoken critic of the traditional law-firm model. In addition to handling wide-ranging employment matters including noncompetes as well as discrimination and wage claims, Shepherd maintains two blogs: Gruntled Employees and the Client Revolution. His tack against the traditional law-firm model has become especially relevant in this economy, as the recession has not been kind to big law firms.

In terms of his own firm, he hopes to grow it to 15 to 20 lawyers in five years.

And as far as the billable hour goes, Shepherd thinks his mission to change how law firms do business has just begun.

“Part of the problem is that this debate has centered so much on the billable hour that people think it’s about invoices and accounting methods, and it’s not. It’s about how we help people. It’s the whole business model,” said Shepherd.

Shepherd’s clients, meanwhile, love that he doesn’t bill for every phone call.

“He’s unique in that he’s really trying to bring business-model innovation to a…conservative profession by nature. And that’s an uphill battle,” said Christopher Mirabile, an angel investor and former Shepherd client.

“The billable hour is just failing people. It’s just not working,” Mirabile continued. “Jay just said, ‘I’m not doing this. I’m going to do something totally different.’ He’s been able to boil it down and really focus on the core value. It’s an innovative and refreshing way to interact with your lawyer.”