Growing up, Shepherd initially loved math, but he later gravitated to English and writing in high school. At Johns Hopkins University, he majored in international relations and was president of the Russian Club.

“I graduated and the Cold War ended. I was like, Never mind, that was a big waste,” said Shepherd.

In law school Shepherd was drawn to employment law.

“It’s not theoretical. It’s everyday people not getting along at work,” he said.

For the first eight years of running the Shepherd Law Group, Shepherd billed clients by the hour. But soon after starting the firm, he began to research everything about the billable hour, including how long it had been in use and whether a fixed-pricing model could even work.

Shepherd discovered law firms hadn’t always billed by the hour. In fact, they started in the 1950s.

His next step was to analyze eight years’ worth of bills from his firm to figure out what was driving costs. Did his clients feel like they got their money’s worth, and did his firm feel like they got paid fairly? He had read that you can’t do litigation on a fixed-fee basis, and 80 percent of his firm’s work is litigation.

“Now, after doing it for three years, I’m here to tell you: You can do litigation on fixed fees. It all comes down to what is the service worth to the client?”

For every case, Shepherd researches the matter at hand and calculates a flat fee from there. He also has a concierge-type plan for clients in which they pay a retainer and get unlimited advice—including free phone calls.

“One of the things I’ve heard clients complain about the most is the lack of certainty and lack of ability of lawyers to say, ‘This is what it’s going to cost you,’” said Shepherd.

In addition to throwing out the billable hour, Shepherd thinks law firms should hire lawyers when they need them, adding that the hiring process at big firms is “crazy.”

He gets about a dozen calls, emails, and tweets a month from lawyers asking about fixed fees. So much so that he’s considering doing consulting work on it.

“I don’t like to see large law firms laying people off…it’s avoidable,” he said. “We’re so resistant as a group to thinking of ourselves as a business. But we are a business. We’re not a priesthood. It’s not a guild.”