Hawksmoor Publishing’s books for lawyers are written by people who have done the job: former law firm CEOs and Managing Partners, legal business development leaders, a sitting magistrate and a probation officer. Whether you run a firm, are working towards partnership, or are building your own client base, these books offer practical, experience-led guidance on the questions that matter most in legal practice today.
Topics include value-based pricing and alternatives to the billable hour, the impact of AI on law firm business models, law firm management and leadership, delegation, and business development for lawyers. Alongside the practice guides, our legal list also includes memoirs and first-hand accounts from inside the justice system.
Pricing legal work beyond the billable hour
Shaun Jardine, a non-practising solicitor and former CEO of a top 250 law firm, has written three books on moving law firms from time-based billing to value-based pricing. Ditch The Billable Hour! is the full implementation guide, Ditch & Switch shows the approach in 50 worked examples, and Stop The Clock takes the argument into the age of AI. Each can be read on its own.
Ditch The Billable Hour! Implementing Value-Based Pricing in a Law Firm
Author: Shaun Jardine
Published 29 January 2024 | 410 pages | ISBN 9781914066443
Generative AI puts the billable hour under greater threat than ever. Former law firm CEO Shaun Jardine explains why firms should stop pricing by time, focus on the results clients want, and adopt Value-Based Pricing. Readers learn what clients truly value, how to hold value conversations, how to price and capture a share of that value, how to offer meaningful choice, and how to lead the change. Engagingly written with cartoons and scenarios, it includes 20+ interviews, practical exercises and a RACI checklist.
Ditch & Switch: 50 Value-Based Pricing Examples for Law Professionals
Author: Shaun Jardine
Published 18 November 2025 | 320 pages | ISBN 9781914066825
Many lawyers accept the case for Value-Based Pricing but struggle to picture it in practice. In this follow-up to Ditch The Billable Hour!, former law firm CEO Shaun Jardine provides 50 worked examples for private client and commercial lawyers, each setting out Gold, Silver and Bronze service options so clients can choose the outcome they want. Scenarios include settlement agreements, child custody, unfair dismissal, property sales, workplace discrimination, joint ventures and competition law. It works as a standalone guide to VBP in action.
Stop The Clock: How The AI Law Firm Moves From Billable Hours to Value-Based Pricing
Author: Shaun Jardine
Published 31 July 2026 | 326 pages | ISBN 9781918612073 / 9781915855503
AI now completes in minutes work that once took a junior lawyer hours, exposing what clients have always paid for: outcomes, not time. Former law firm CEO Shaun Jardine offers a candid, jargon-free guide to pricing legal work in an AI-enabled world, built around his 8 P Point Plan. Readers learn to spot the efficiency trap, win over sceptics and price by value rather than discount in panic. Includes an AI Pricing Canvas across twenty-plus practice areas, a managing partner’s checklist and interviews with 17 leading voices.
Law firm management and leadership
Simon McCrum’s Law Firm Management and Leadership Trilogy looks at what makes a law firm succeed from three angles: the business, the individual lawyer and the Partner. Simon qualified in 1990 and, as Managing Partner, led Darbys Solicitors through the 2008 credit crunch to become the country’s fastest-growing law firm. Alongside the trilogy, Dan Warburton’s book tackles the delegation problem that keeps many firm owners stuck at their desks.
The Perfect Legal Business
Author: Simon McCrum
Published 23 July 2025 | 156 pages | ISBN 9781914066726
What if lasting law firm success comes not from billing more hours but from shaping structure, approach and attitude differently? Simon McCrum sets out a framework built on intelligent client selection, proactive client care, purposeful management, higher pricing for higher service, lawyer inputs rather than outputs, and the importance of cash – all bound together by leadership. The first edition sold thousands of copies in over 50 countries; this updated edition reflects his latest thinking on profitable, sustainable growth.
The Perfect Lawyer
Author: Simon McCrum
Published 23 July 2025 | 200 pages | ISBN 9781914066719
What makes a perfect lawyer? Former Managing Partner Simon McCrum argues it is someone who excels from both the client’s perspective and the firm’s – very different things. Such lawyers make a commercial contribution beyond billing, show self-awareness and leadership, treat clients as people rather than cases, work as a team, and seek maximum value for client and business alike. This updated edition of the 2023 original is the sister book to The Perfect Legal Business and part of the Law Firm Management and Leadership Trilogy.
The Perfect Partner
Author: Simon McCrum
Published 23 July 2025 | 274 pages | ISBN 9781914066733
What qualities does a Partner in a modern law firm need? Simon McCrum examines the role from the viewpoint of clients, colleagues and the business, covering commercial contribution, relationships with staff and fellow Partners, business development, accountability and compliance. He reaches a surprising conclusion: measurable things matter, but human qualities matter more, and every Partner must focus on one ‘magic ingredient’ to make the firm unstoppable. Drawing on 35 years’ experience, it includes interviews with legal professionals at every level.
Delegate Now to Supercharge Your Profits
Author: Dan Warburton
Published 21 January 2025 | 160 pages | ISBN 9781914066498
How can law firm owners bill fewer hours yet earn bigger profits? Growth consultant Dan Warburton argues that skilful delegation drives profitability more than anything else, yet most owners stay trapped in heavy billable workloads. With real examples and case studies, he shows how to stop being the bottleneck, build loyal teams, hand over long-standing clients without losing them, create chains of command that give owners their time back, and use acknowledgement to keep the best people. Essential reading for owners fearing burnout.
Find out more about Delegate Now to Supercharge Your Profits
Business development for lawyers
Winning and keeping clients is a skill most lawyers are never taught. This book gives lawyers at every stage a structured way to plan and grow their practice.
Beyond Billable Hours: The Growth Accelerator for Lawyers
Author: Barbara Koenen-Geerdink
Publishing 7 October 2026 | 262 pages | ISBN 9781914066863 (UK) / 9781915855510 (Rest of World)
Most lawyers assume good work alone will grow their practices; it rarely does. Drawing on her career as a law firm Chief Marketing Officer and growth consultant, Barbara Koenen-Geerdink offers a structured alternative. At its core is the North Star Framework, which takes lawyers from vague ambition to a defined purpose, clear value propositions and Ideal Client Profiles. It covers pricing, relationship management, emotional intelligence, go-to-market strategy and AI in business development, with insights from 24 experts worldwide. For associates, partners and legal BD professionals.
Inside the law and the justice system
Not every book on our legal list is a practice guide. These three titles show the legal and justice systems from the inside: a founder who broke the mould of the profession, a probation officer’s two decades on the front line, and a year on the magistrates’ bench.
(Out)Law: From Teenage Mum to Legal Trailblazer
Author: Alice Stephenson
Published 30 November 2023 | 220 pages | ISBN 9781914066382
At 18, Alice Stephenson faced teenage motherhood and homelessness. She went on to university while raising her child, qualified as a solicitor, and in 2017 founded her own firm, Stephenson Law. Her memoir is an inspiring story of resilience and a challenge to a male-dominated, elitist profession. It explores the barriers facing women and those who don’t fit the mould, takes aim at archaic traditions and discrimination, and argues that innovation, inclusivity and humanising lawyers are the keys to change.
Imperfect: The Life of a Probation Officer
Author: Jonathan Hussey
Published 2 June 2025 | 184 pages | ISBN 9781914066702
Jonathan Hussey, author of the Probation Workbook series, offers an honest memoir of two decades in the Criminal Justice System – from adult probation and youth justice to the turbulent rollout of Transforming Rehabilitation. He reflects on working with repeat offenders, sex offenders and young people on the cusp of change, and on the emotional and mental health toll of frontline probation work. Blending personal narrative with professional reflection, it is a revealing guide for aspiring and current practitioners alike.
The Secret Magistrate
Author: Anonymous (a serving magistrate)
Published 9 October 2020 | 336 pages | ISBN 9781838099008
Every criminal case in England and Wales begins in a magistrates’ court, and most end there. But who are magistrates, how are they recruited and trained, and are they still fit for purpose? Written by a serving inner-city magistrate, this is an eye-opening, behind-the-scenes tour of a year on the bench, told through memorable cases including the disqualified driver who drove away from court and Fifi the Attack Chihuahua. The author donates all royalties to charity. Foreword by Malcolm Richardson OBE, former Chair of the Magistrates Association.
Buy direct from Hawksmoor Publishing
All of these titles can be bought direct from us, with free P&P to UK addresses, as well as from Amazon, Waterstones and other booksellers. Visit each book’s page for buying options and eBook availability, or browse the full legal category.
Hawksmoor Publishing is an imprint of Bennion Kearny, an independent British publisher based in Oakamoor, Staffordshire. We commission non-fiction from practitioners who work in the fields they write about, including lawyers and law firm leaders. If you are a legal professional with a book in mind, get in touch.