LNC questions - help!

[Loujo02]

I am a new independent Legal Nurse Consultant working on my first case with an attorney whose office is located about 45 minutes away from my home. I have had one meeting with the lawyer and his client already. The attorney and I have agreed upon my hourly consulting fee for such meetings. My question though is is it appropriate for me to bill for my time going to the meeting in addition to the time at the meeting? I know this practice of "portal to portal" expense reimbursement is common in other consulting fields but is it industry standard for LNC's? Any advice would be helpful, thanks!

[ink]

Hi Lou,
I got my LNC degree 5 yrs. ago and have never used it..I'd like to do some independent consulting too. How did you start? Now I'm afraid I won't know what I'm doing since it was so long ago that I took the course. I would think that you could charge for travel expenses and the meeting time at whatever you charge per hour. Good luck and let me know how you went about starting. Thanks, Ink

[nursinghumor]

****o Lou,

It's absolutely appropriate for you to bill for travel time. Whether to bill depends on your comfort level and confidence. If you have more work than you can handle, are charging $150/hr and find yourself absolutely swamped, you shouldn't think twice about it.

If you are less successful or just starting out, you may want to waive the travel time for the first few cases till you have a steady supply of work.

For a 15-30 minute drive to a client's office, that's questionable to charge. But for your example of 45 minutes, to an hour or more, count travel time as either billable hours or a set fee per mile. The billable hour calculation is usually the way to go.

Have you checked out any of the e-mail discussion groups or forums for legal nurse consultants? Quite a few out there, and most are free as well. They're a great place to network

You can find a few on http://www.nursingexperts.com in the resources section.

Best wishes,

Andrew Lopez, RN
http://www.nursinga2z.com

[medi]

Lou,

Andrew's reply sounds perfect, and those discussion groups sound like an excellent way to network and learn from those experienced in the field. I would just add that most attorneys bill for all time spent "working" on a case-- many charge the client for time spent on the phone with the client, for time discussing the case with a collegue, time spent doing legal research, basically any time they can, so it would seem reasonable to bill for travel to some degree to cover your time & vehicle expense when having to meet with them client as well.

[Loujo02]

Hi all,

Thanks for the replies, I was not sure whether or not to bill but I do know that many other consultants in the field charge for travel so I will be doing so, thanks!!

Ink, as far as how I got started, I got my LNC cert this year and just sent a slew of letters out to attorneys in the yellowpages and then never thought about it again. I was a per diem RN at a hospital but have since taken a FT homecare RN job and just figured I'd do the LNC on the side. Last month an attorney who rec'd my letter called me up to review a case and I am still working on it...he now has two more for me to review also... My advice would be to just sent out letters and see what happens, I imagine you're not in too much of a rush since you've waited five years, right? Are you just looking for some side work if it is available?