You've decided to engage a Law Firm. Engaging a high quality Law Firm should be a rewarding experience that brings with it positive outcomes…..but, how do you control or reduce the price you pay for the legal services that you receive? Here are a few tips that we hope will help you along your legal journey.
Understand with Clarity your Retainer/Engagement Agreement
Do not be afraid to ask questions. Make sure you understand every nuance of the Engagement Agreement that you or your business will be entering into. Understand fee rates for each lawyer or staff working on your legal matter and what disbursements or other costs you or your business may be billed for. This will enable you or your business to better control spend.
Itemized Invoicing
Ensure that you will be receiving detailed itemized invoices for all services rendered to you and/or your business. The transparency of properly itemized invoices makes for a healthier financial relationship.
Transparent Pricing & Open Communication
Hourly rates and fixed price rates for legal services should make sense. At any given time, you should be able to request detailed information regarding your lawyers approach to pricing.
Incremental Billing
For fees that are on a time-billed basis (hourly Legal fees) request billing in increments of .1 which equates to 6 minutes of time. Billing in 6 minute units helps maintain transparency and it also means that you or your business only get charged for actual time spent on work.
Fixed Price
Ask your Lawyer about fixed fees. Depending on the nature of your legal matter, flat fee or fixed fee pricing can help control costs, can add predictability and can help with budgeting.
Cost-Effective Work Procedures
Improving service levels and creating process efficiencies should be built into the DNA of any Law Firm that you are considering. Consider asking your Lawyer how they go about ensuring cost efficiencies throughout the legal process.
Early Cases Assessments
Statistically, industry norms say that a high volume of files will often settle before going to trial, and we have found that to be true. We have also found and recognize that there can be significant cost savings realized for clients when early assessments reduce the length of time invested in determining an outcome.
At the end of the day, try to ensure that your Lawyer always aims to fuse the best legal outcome with maximum cost effectiveness, value and efficiency. We hope that you found this article to be valuable and we wish you success on your journey.
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