Attorney fees
 

We haven't needed an attorney for a while and now we do. We like the one we have but I just opened his bill and it's $225 an hour.

It is what it is but I was just wondering if this is normal (Corporate attorney, not personal).

This is a small, small town firm with maybe half a dozen in the office.

[lament] Why didn't I take that scholarship[/lament]

Very reasonably priced compared to the attorney fees I have paid in the last year.

Thats reasonable, I Just paid $300.00 per hour for some Real Estate contract work. That was the "friend of a friend" deal. He usually gets $350.00 perhour

Ok, thanks guys. It's just been a while.

I have a used another firm here in the city (a huge monster of a firm) and I decided with this I didn't want to end up with the greenest associate in a big pond.

What county Len? I have used several just south of GR

Ottawa county(West of Grand Rapids which is Kent county)

What do you get up here for?

Mine is billing me $300 hr. Your getting a deal.

Its frustrating, I am caught up in a BS lawsuit against me and its costing $3,000 to $5,000 a month. The nice part is I am 100% I will win this and I am praying the judge/jury order my legal fees payed in full.

Very astute thinking, Len. That is a very reasonable rate for a business matter. Unless it's a huge complex case where you need an army of attorneys, you're probably better off with a smaller firm where the attorney you retain is the one who does the work. Just remember that there's a lot of overhead in law, as there is in other professional fields, so you need to pay a decent hourly rate to keep the lawyer motivated to give you good service. Sounds like you've found someone with a good ballance of professionalism and acceptable rates.

$225 is reasonable ONLY if they can deliver $225 worth of value. Many cannot.

Too many people focus on just the rate. Remember, there are 2 components to the bottom line on your legal bill. (1) Rate, and (2) hours.

The rate is fixed, but the hours are highly variable. Using that variable, the attorney can make your bill whatever he wants it to be. Really, the hourly rate is pretty much unimportant, because of the other variables that make up the bill. All that really matters is how good the work is, and what the bottom line cost is.

Keep careful track of what he is doing, and make sure you are happy that he is doing it efficiently, and that the bill makes sense at the end of the month.

After you get your first bill, call him and, in a very nice manner, question him about some of the minor charges. Not in a complaining way, just in a "oh, I saw this and was wondering what it was for" way. It's a way of letting him know that you are carefully looking at the bills, instead of just getting and paying them. It may help to take a bit of the lead out of his pencil the next time he prepares his bill.

Thanks, I appreciate the advice.

Don't forget the meter will be running during this call too:

lol I've told this story before but it's worth a recap.

We bought a large piece of equipment a few years back from a failed enterprise that consisted of a couple of lawyers and another guy that wanted to start a business. Bottom line is they were over their heads and folded the tent.

We bought the main piece of equipment and left them with some ancillary items.

A year later we had a need for some of the extras and I called him up and asked for prices. A couple days go by and I get an e-mailed list of the items with their prices (which were stupid high) and I immediately thanked him but declined as we could make the items much cheaper.

I got a call from him not minutes later and he was unhappy. He incredulously complained to me that he had spent hours making that list and who was going to reimburse him for that? I **** you not. I didn't even understand what he was talking about and when it hit me I laughed. I then explained that in this business you don't get paid to quote.

It was more involved and humorous than that but I'm pressed for time right now.

Funny stuff. . .

I'd have told him that if he was going to bill for the time preparing the quote, he could have at least researched competitive prices on the quotes before just pulling #'s out of the sky.

Maybe! Be sure you write on your calendar the date and time that you made the call. Keep the call brief (like less than 2 minutes) and to the point, just talk about the bill, not about the case.

Then when the next bill comes, you will learn a lot about his billing practices. (IMO he should only bill you for legal work and advice, not for discussing his bill).

Len, if you do what is suggested above, you will probably find out a lot about your lawyer, buy not in the way you think. If you call on a pretense to quibble about a small item on the bill, a lawyer who is overcharging you will probably negotiate with you, mark his bills down to make you happy and upcharge you somewhere else where you'll never see it. A good lawyer who is busy and giving you good value for the time he is charging is likely to send the file back to you. Look the bill over. Are you happy with the rate and time? If everything looks good and you're happy with his work leave him alone. He's treating you well. If you give him the impression you're going to flyspeck his bills he will either overcharge you to make up for the discounts he promises you or he'll send you back the file. If it happened to me I would give the client one short phone call explaination of my bill. At the second call I would tell the client he could accept my bill or take his file back. I might be more prickly than most lawyers, but I wouldn't tolerate that from a client because doing that usually suggests the client will be more difficult as the case goes on. Don't create an unpleasant feeling between you and your attorney if the bills look good the way they are. But if you think he's juicing the bills pull the file immediately.

Also look at the minimum billing unit that firm charges. Some firms .25 hours (15 min) as the minimum time to be billed for the task. No one charges less than .1 (6 minutes) simply because it would be impossible to charge perfect per minute time. So a 2 minute phone call costs the same as a 5 minute one.

I don't do work for outside clients, but I know large companies do check the billings they get from their law firms. OTOH, in the small business context, I suspect MRM is right.

The real question is value. How do you find that out? Well, other lawyers in town will know who the best people are in their field. $225 is what someone with about 8 years of experience might charge here - a city of 150,000. A specialist would charge more. Specializing in litigation in federal ct. usually means more than a state court type person. And so on...

Hurts everytime.
Made me cry once ;)

I am crying right now, sleepless nights, anxiety, felling of invasion of privacy as they order to see everything in my life.

As we approach the court date I find myself up al night playing it out in my head.


Here is a question, you call out your attorney on billing practices and he gets pissed and tells you he no longer wants to represent you. Then what?

I feel like I am caught in a bad situation where I need to just take it up the ass for a year and hope I can recover my losses in the end.

When I left private practice in 2005 I was charging $250.00 per hour. I live in a town of about 50,000 and I probably was one of the highest hourly rate attorneys in town. Never had a single client call to complain about their bill. To be honest I rarely billed for all my time. If you called me and the call was only for a few minutes I didn't bother to write the time down. Fortunately it was my firm and I could do whatever I wanted.

I believe he has a legal obligation to continue to represent you. Check with your local legal society.

Randy, I do a mix of work for large companies and insurers and local businesses. The major corporation I do work for does check my bills every month and in three years they haven't deducted a cent. The insurer, on the other hand, has a computer program that automatically trims the bills. I had to take three cases for the insurance company last year. I final billed them all in December and all three were trimmed exactly $1,500 each. I won't do work for them or any other insurer precisely because they trim bills. I only took those three cases because they were tied up with my other book of business. I know many firms that used to do insurance defense work that wont take a case from an insurer for that very reason. If my major client started trimming my bills I'd change my book of business.

Jim, no attorney wants his client to feel like you do. There is a difference between harassing a lawyer over his bills and asking him about the status of your case and what you can expect in the future. I would suspect the lawyer doesn't know you are feeling in the dark and if he did he would explain to you exactly what was going on and why. Did you get a litigation budget and plan from the lawyer when you started the case? I think it would be a good idea for you to schedule a half hour conference with your lawyer so he could give you a case status, his strategy for moving forward, and an estimate for what tasks need to be done and what they'll cost. You can tell him that you are billing sensative but that you do expect to pay a fair fee for good service, you just need to understand what's going on.

That is true in criminal defense cases. In civil litigation the lawyer can generally withdraw at any time, as long as the withdrawal doesn't unfairly prejudice the client. That is differenct from state to state, but it usually means the lawyer can't withdraw the day of trial. He can withdraw with enough notice for the client to find other counsel.

I was 5 days late paying a $4,700 bill, (They are holding a $5,000 retainer) and received a letter stating that services would be withdrawn if I did not pay up.

Kind of gave me the feeling that the case does not matter as much as the money.

He is doing a stellar job, when we took the Plaintiff's deposition he really nailed him to the wall, I honestly thought they would withdraw their lawsuit after the deposition because it was apparent to everyone in the room this was a BS lawsuit.

But they are pressing on.....

My b1tch better have my money
Through rain, sleet, or snow
My whore better have my money
Not half, not some, but all my cash
'Cause if she don't,
I'm gonna put my foot in her ass.

:D BTW, I just spent a few hundred oin the phone with mine. Good guy but he made no bones about needing that retainer asap.

Jim:

They could be using the ole Insurance Company ploy, "Last one standing wins" or who ever runs out of money first, loses. They tried that with me, didn't work!!

Jim,
You probably can't talk about it--but what's the lawsuit about?

Hey Jim,
Sorry to hear about this buddy, just chiming back in from my last post and see what you're up against.

Hard to say without knowing the facts. I'm a developer, dealing with lawyers was a daily routine in my prime days. You learn how to deal with them, much the same as dealing with other professionals like architects. They work for me; I keep control.

In my prime, I had three lawyers; all good guys. One guy charged me $65/hr, another $125 and another $250; this goes back 10 to 15 years ago. I would pick my the lawyer that I needed; sometimes I went from the $65 to the $250. The $250 guy is the best in the Country, drives a 930 twin turbo too. But his bills can bring you to your knees.

I have worked along side the $250 (Kerry Powel of Calgary) guy with some of his clients as a liasson to keep the legal bills down, and I've done some claims consulting helping companies keep their legal bills down. A recent case we worked on together involving a HUGE developer and contractor BULLY team cost our client $300,000 to defend himself from going bankrupt; never even went to discoveries. We won btw!

I am currently being sued by a total lier; slam dunk case, witnesses, paperwork, etc. and the suer won't back off; going to discoveries soon. It's so frustrating defending yourself against these type of people.

another story: one time the City of Calgary sued me with their in-house corporate lawyers and endless funds, I had to sue my mechanical contractor as a result; which he went broke over, but luckily his insurance company kicked in. The case involved millions of dollars and after 3 or 4 years, I lost. It was absolutely ugly. The City's lawyer was extremely smart and intelligent and they had a friggin filing cabinet of legal mumbo jumbo tied to my 'small' contract that I'd signed. I recovered all my costs from my insurance company, who in turn recovered from the mechanical contractors insurance company.

I'd love to help out anyway I could Jim, just let me know; otherwise the best of luck to you!
Maybe time to change your avatar to a smiling, happy guy?

Removed

My avatar makes me giggle. It stays.

Any lawyer that charges $300-400 per hour should be among those guys that I mentioned in another post...when that lawyer goes to get a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk the clerk should be able to pick anumber out of the sky...like $71.60 or 47.95 or whatever strikes the clerks fancy at that particular time.

Because if a lawyer is truly worth $400 an hour then his food should certainly be worth a similarly priced amount.

Yes, I do have issues with most of the fees that most of lawyers charge for most of the things they do. Certainly there may be isolated instances where the lawyers are worth what they are allowed to extort from their clients...but not very damn often.

Much of the time people have to get a lawyer when they are at their most vulnerable (divorce, death, business or personal disputes, crime issues, etc) and these social parasites often benefit only because of the bad fortune of their clients. And sometimes they even appear to take advantage of their clients.

It's no small coincidence that most of our scummy politicians are former lawyers! :rolleyes:

Thanks Jim, appreciate the explaination.
I sure hope it works out for you AND I like your avatar too, its was just a little graphic when I read your first reply :eek:

onramp?

Depends on what you need the lawyer for and how bad you need him, doesn't it? :)

One of the funnier posts I have read in awhile

Oh, snap!

Just like it "depends" on how bad the lawyer might need bread or milk, doesn't it?

Offramp?

Sounds reasonable. Just don't make any phone calls to him. Except to make appointments with his secretary. And keep it short.