Paying your attorney

Summary

The primary message of this blog is that unless you are speaking to an attorney at a non-profit or a legal clinic, the motivation of the attorney is probably to earn money. Attorneys generally get paid by the hour (hourly), as a percentage of what they win for you (contingency) or based on a single payment of money for a specific set of legal services (flat fee). Generally, the client pays costs of suit, meaning money that the attorney needs to pay to others, in addition to what they pay the attorney.

Details

In general, unless you are speaking with a non-profit legal service or a law clinic, attorneys are in the business of charging clients money in exchange for providing legal services.

It is safe to say that regardless of what any attorney might tell you, unless you are speaking with a non-profit legal service or a law clinic, the attorney you are speaking with is only speaking to you for the purpose of earning money. After all, law firms are businesses. Attorneys have bills. They also have personal lives. So, if the attorney is not earning money to pay the bills, they probably prefer to focus on their personal life.

This may be surprising to some. However, that is pretty much how the entire world works. People need goods and services.

Businesses charge money to provide those goods and services.

To the extent you don’t like this, you may be better off seeking a non-profit legal service or a law clinic. Not all private attorneys will tell you they practice for money expressly, but many won’t give you any time whatsoever, unless you pay them.

So, now that you understand that most attorneys are speaking to you in order to earn money, it may be useful to understand how attorneys get paid.

Fortunately, that is pretty easy to understand. The methods of paying an attorney usually fall into one of three (3) categories: (1) hourly payment; (2) contingency; or (3) flat fee.

Hourly payment means that the attorney and you agree to an hourly rate of money that you agree to pay the attorney for the time spent on the case. The attorney then tracks the amount of time the attorney spends on your legal matter. The attorney then multiplies the total amount of time the attorney worked on your matter and multiplies that by an hourly rate of pay that you and your attorney agreed upon. The result of the hours worked multiplied by the time spent is the amount of money the hourly attorney charges you.

To the extent that this is confusing, it works pretty much the way an hourly, non-salary job works.

Some of the complexities of hourly payment include whether payment is in advance of services provided or after services provided and whether you need to pay a

deposit⁠

Contingency means that the attorney and you agree to a percentage of the amount of money that is actually collected from your opposition that the attorney will get. With a contingency agreement, the client usually does not pay anything, if no money is obtained.

Some of the complexities of contingency payment include that the contingency based attorney gets a lien on the proceeds of your case, meaning that that attorney is entitled to be paid for the reasonable value of time spent on your case, before you get any money, even if you fire that attorney. Also, usually,

costs of the lawsuit⁠

are reduced from your percentage of the contingency, meaning that the attorney gets more than the percentage specified, and you get less that the percentage specified. Costs are subtracted, after the contingency payments are divided between attorney and client[s].

Flat Fee means that the client pays a single amount for specified legal services.

Now you should have a basic understanding of how attorneys are compensated.

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