Flat-Fee Firms Collect Nearly Twice as Fast and Close Matters 2.6x Quicker: The 2026 Data That Makes Pricing a Cash-Cycle Decision, Not a Marketing One

Rate increases are still doing the heavy lifting in law firm growth — Am Law 50 standard rates rose over 10% this year — but rate-led growth does not fix a slow cash cycle. New 2026 benchmarking finds firms billing flat fees collect nearly twice as fast and close matters 2.6 times quicker than hourly counterparts. That reframes pricing from a positioning question into a working-capital question, and most firms cannot answer it because they do not know their cost to deliver.