Services We Provide
We undertake projects only on a fee basis, calculated on published guidelines. We do not ever operate on contingency fees or other financial structures that might bias our work. All clients pay on the same rate structure, including government and charitable agencies as well as private clients.
In return for the fee, we agree to provide (a tests and test data constituting valid proof of compliance or non-compliance with the agreed specification (b a software program which is capable of demonstrating the compliance or non-compliance in a court room or a board room or (c both a and b. If we cannot provide either (a or (b, we will decline the project.
In all cases, we provide only end-user licenses and non-distributable copies of the actual software. However, to law firms or non-profit agencies (as opposed to litigation clients), we will license reuse of the tools with other clients.
In every case, we design and validate the tests for operations on at least two products or two test environments, known as the "test targets". If there are only two "test targets", only one of these can be the product that your client is challenging or defending in a legal context. The second is a control and only the contracts team can ever know which system is the control. Note that the control may be a system or product that is believed to meet the spec or fail the spec, as meets your client's needs. We do not require that you inform even the contracts team which "test target" is the control.
A project may include multiple test targets and multiple controls -- but the increased complexity will naturally be reflected in the project fee.
In general, you may either pay according to a fixed estimate or on accumulated time. Both options are based on the same basic fee structure, but accumulated time projects are surcharged since we are unable use prepayments or other incentives to reduce costs. In addition, we will charge actual authorized expenses for travel, materials, and supplies plus 18%.
The fees are based on the following hourly rates:
Design $150.00 (US) Test $75.00 (US) Contracts $125.00 (US)
