Ga-doing! Ga-doing! Ga-doing!

Hear the sledges with the bells -Silver bells!What a world of merriment their melody foretells!How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,In the icy air of night!While the stars that oversprinkleAll the heavens, seem to twinkleWith a crystalline delight;Keeping time, time, time,In a sort of Runic rhyme,To the tintinnabulation that so musically wellsFrom the bells, bells, bells, bells,Bells, bells, bells -From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

- Edgar Allen Poe

There it was on page 64 of the January 23, 2010 issue of The Economist! Another death knell for the billable hour has sounded.

In a recent paper, 'The Death of Big Law,' Larry Ribstein, a law professor at the University of Illinois, argued that after decades without changing, law firms are likely to have an outburst of experimentation with different business models: even the venerable and lucrative "billable hour" method of charging clients is in doubt.

It reads like an obituary doesn't it. We hear at VeraSage anxiously await the wake!