“A lawyer’s time and advice are his stock in trade.”

—Abraham Lincoln

We try our best to have a pro-client perspective on legal fees. At the very least, we try to take the mystery out of legal fees. We will let you know – to the best our ability – what the fees will be in your matter.

Here’s how we deal with fees:

We bill in one of three ways: flat fee, hourly fee, or contingency fee (or, occasionally, some combination of these).

• Flat fee: Whenever possible, we like to use flat fees for services. Flat fees are easier on everyone – we know how much we will be billing, and the client knows how much the service will cost. Some of the services we offer for flat fees include: real estate closings (for buyers and sellers), evictions (for landlords), and estate planning (for most estate planning).
• Hourly fee: Sometimes the amount of time and effort in a matter is not predictable enough to set a flat fee. We know that, since you are paying good money for our services – whether flat fee, hourly fee, or contingency fee – you deserve to get your money’s worth, and we endeavor to provide that for you.
• Contingency fee: For personal injury cases, we use a contingency fee – that’s when we take a percentage of whatever we can recover for you as our fee (plus costs and expenses incurred), and if we are not able to recover anything, you owe us nothing. For personal injury cases, our contingency fee is one-third of whatever we recover, plus costs and expenses.

About so-called “costs and expenses”: common examples include filing fees at court, obtaining copies of medical records/police reports/etc., and paying for a process server. We promise you that when we bill you for “costs and expenses” we will itemize each one of them and explain each one to you. We do not bill for “miscellaneous expenses” – never, ever. You will know that each charge for costs and expenses is legitimate and why it had to be incurred.

For some matters we require a retainer, and for others we do not. Our policy on retainers comes from our experience on the best way to work on particular matters – that is, we have found that in some matters no retainer is necessary, whereas in others a retainer really is necessary.

We always offer a free in-person initial consultation (normally limited to 30 minutes). We also happily give free initial consultations over the telephone or email. We also give free consultations at Ask The Lawyer Night. Furthermore, this website has substantial legal information, all at no charge.