Food for Thought
The other day a prospective client came in for a free consultation. After going over the details of his situation and answering his questions I quoted him a fee. Now this was a fairly serious matter. The prospective client had a very real chance of going to jail possibly even prison if convicted. He then pulled out a letter he received from an attorney offering to handle his case for $250. Now I had estimated that his case was going to take 6-8 hours of work to handle properly (witnesses to check out, police reports to review, possible videotapes, some legal research, court appearances etc.). I got thinking about that other fee. Sometimes with flat fees its easy to lose sight of the analysis. Ultimately the only thing a lawyer has to sell are his time and experience. Bottom line with that fee there were only two possibilities: either that lawyer’s time was valued at $30-40/hr as a result of his inexperience or other factors(know any good lawyers that work for that amount?) or he was only going to spend an hour to 90 minutes on the client’s case (a scary prospect since he was an out of county attorney who would spend at least an hour driving to and from Frederick in the first place). Either possibility is unsatisfactory for the client.
Eric