By J.B. Heaton ( December 15, 2017, 4:35 PM EST) -- Next year will mark the 25th anniversary of the founding of one of the nation's best known litigation boutique firms, Bartlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott LLP. When Fred Bartlit and his co-founders started the firm in October 1993, they committed to escape the hourly billing system. Their innovation was to charge clients a flat monthly fee and add a performance kicker, often by allowing the client to leave part of the monthly fee unpaid until the case was resolved, with payment of the "holdback" to occur in the event the case was not lost, and multiples of the holdback paid depending on the kind of victory the firm achieved. Early articles from the mid-nineties on the Bartlit Beck fee model — most still available on the firm's website — predicted a revolution. The hourly model would disappear, replaced by the more predictable flat fee model with its built-in incentives to achieve a better outcome....