Hiring Any Attorney.
Hiring an attorney for the first time can feel intimidating. At The Hemmat Law Group we believe in educating you about the legal industry, even if you never hire us.
Hiring Any Attorney – Generally Why you hire an attorney.
Clients do not hire attorneys to prepare documents and argue in court. Clients hire firms to peer around corners and provide predictions on likely outcomes. Though we do prepare documents and advocate as part of our jobs, this is only a side effect of our real function:
Law firms manage the unwritten rules and uncertainty you cannot know about alone.
Attorneys generally charge in three different ways:
By the Hour in .1 hour (6 min) increments.
Hourly fees are the most common way a lawyer charges for services. Because:
Hourly time is flexible & open ended. In theory, you will only be charged as much as the matter takes to address.
But this flexibility is exactly the downfall of the hourly rate. The expense has a potentially infinite ceiling if your case gets out of hand. Very common in family law cases where contention requires agility.
Per-project (flat-fee) basis.
Flat fees are project-based billings where a firm takes a fixed payment up from to accomplish a specific task.
Best employed when matters are highly predictable or fixed in scope, or where risk management is less of a factor. Very common in business law, where fixed contract drafting occurs frequently.
Flat fees are particularly great at controlling expenses for clients.
On contingency (% of a settlement)
Contingency fees are where a firm agrees to take payment out of an anticipated payoff at the end of a case. Most common in injury cases or class action lawsuits.
This means that you can hire a firm for free, and they don’t get paid unless they win.
In Washington, attorneys are forbidden from offering this fee structure in family law matters.
In a nutshell
Hourly fees are flexible, flat fees are predictable, and contingency fees are accessible. Choose your billing structure carefully.
Attorney deposits
Attorneys usually require some sort of deposit up front to manage your case. Two types are common:
Retainers
Retainers are big bags of money you give to a firm to take your case. They are earned the moment they are received and are nonrefundable even if the lawyer quits the next day. Firms that require retainers usually bill you for hourly time on top of their retainer requirement.
Hemmat Law does not usually take retainers.
Trust Deposits
Trust deposits are gas tanks of your money a firm holds on file during your case. The firm’s invoices will (generally) be paid out of trust, and the trust balance will be replenished periodically. Trust funds are also used to pay case expenses, like clerks and process service fees. This is the model we follow.
HLG’s Opinions on the Legal Industry and hiring us The State of The Industry:
This sucks.
Our industry is rife with systemic challenges.
On one hand, an inefficient bureaucracy of the courts, who usually place strict limitations on how we can approach complex problems. It is a strictly rational system that adheres so rigidly to arbitrary standards that it defies common sense. At best, it is an apathetic machine that tries its best to understand you, but often fails.
On the other, clients who have very understandable time and financial constraints.
Many of these people are also in various stages of personal crisis and are in no mood to put in the weeks of work and thousands of dollars needed to operate in our industry.
As a team of mostly family lawyers, we are very aware that most of our clients would prefer to have never needed us. We get it.
