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This is not an issue unique to law - my father carried out IT support on a self-employed basis for around 5 years before retiring and found consistently that many small business customers routinely sought free advice, tried to barter down prices after agreeing them and often failed to pay invoices and sought to renegotiate for further, cheaper or even free work before doing so.

For all of the polite, loyal, prompt-paying and honest customers he had, there was usually another who represented the polar opposite of those traits (there was no correlation with the type of industry or trade, for what it's worth).

Law firms should expect no different. All we can do is do provide the best possible advice at the appropriate price without compromising our regulatory code. If any particular client doesn't accept that (as I'm sure most would!), I'm quite sure they'll go to somebody else.