The cost of consumer legal services
Not all consumer legal matters require the retention of a law firm. Many types of routine legal tasks and services can just as quickly be performed by online services rather than through the traditional law firm pricing model.
Consumers of essential legal services benefit from a competitive and changing legal market that can deliver crucial legal work at a fraction of conventional law firm prices. Here is what you need to know:
The drafting of basic and routine legal documents such as a petition for a name change or a living will, filing a copyright, or drafting an essential last will can usually be handled through a local or online document service.
However, when legal issues require research, interpreting case law, or legal problem-solving, you are almost always better served by retaining an experienced lawyer. Let’s look at the different ways lawyers charge consumers for basic legal services:
Traditional legal fee arrangements
Methods of attorney fee compensation include contingency fees, hourly billing, and fixed-rate fees. There are also blended fee agreements that incorporate two or more features of traditional forms of legal billing. Each of these fee arrangements is described below.
Contingency fees
In contingency fee cases, the firm agrees to earn its fee as a percentage of the client’s financial settlement or award. Customary contingency fees for personal injury law matters are usually based on one-third of the plaintiff’s total recovery before trial, and forty percent of the plaintiff’s recovery should the matter proceed to trial. Both the attorney and the client assume the risk in these types of fee arrangements. If the client loses the case and receives nothing, so does the law firm.
Hourly billing
Most attorneys still charge by the hour for legal work rendered. Young lawyers are hired and told the number of billables they are “required” to bill. Hourly rates can range significantly depending on the qualifications and reputation of the lawyer or firm retained. Today hourly rates start in the three-hundred dollar range. The disadvantage to hourly rate arrangements is that the lawyer has no incentive to complete the matter quickly. The sad truth remains the longer a lawyer spends on a matter, the more the lawyer earns.
Fixed Fee Basis
Attorneys usually charge a fixed fee for standard routine matters such as wills, deeds, uncontested divorce, incorporation, name change, and simple bankruptcy. Fixed costs or flat fees, as they are sometimes called, are based on a single price in exchange for a single fixed sum. In this arrangement, the attorney and firm are rewarded for efficiency and time saving rather than for the amount of time it took to complete the matter.
Discount legal services
Some discount legal services are similar to the fixed fee arrangement explained above. The significant difference is that most discount legal services utilize paralegals rather than attorneys to perform the work. For example, a simple non-contested divorce might cost just a few hundred dollars, compared with the customary few thousand dollars most divorce lawyers bill for the same uncontested divorce.
Other discount legal services provide the purchaser with fill-in-the-blank legal forms, which are relatively straightforward to complete. They are often called form kits. Each form kit is state-specific, so you know you are dealing with the right set of rules in your state. The form kit also comes with easy-to-read instructions; the whole package can cost you as little as $20.
Finally, family legal plans resemble insurance products administered through large organizations and require monthly dues in exchange for deep discounts on specific types of legal services.
How much you save depends on how you use these services. The attorney quality is usually not as high as you might find in some of the larger, more prestigious firms, but then again, that’s why the legal services in such plans are discounted.
Legal Aid
Legal aid assists people who are unable to afford legal representation. Legal aid provides free access to lawyers and the court system.
