If you ever need to hire a lawyer, then you need to figure out how to pay them, assuming they are not working for you pro bono. If you do get an attorney to work for you for free, that probably means you know them and they’re helping you as a favor. You may also occasionally have a situation where a lawyer will represent you without charging you if they feel that they should do so for humanitarian reasons.
In this article, we will talk about four ways that you can potentially pay your lawyer if you hire one. We will also talk about the times when each one benefits you.
You Can Pay Via Contingency
You can pay your lawyer via a contingency structure. That’s almost always to your benefit. However, an attorney will only usually agree to this payment plan in very particular circumstances.
Usually, a lawyer will agree to let you pay them via contingency if you’re hiring them so they can help you with a lawsuit. That means this attorney works within the personal injury niche.
Such lawyers will agree to represent you, and you pay no money upfront. Maybe you’ve seen local personal injury lawyers advertising their services on local TV. Perhaps they will say you should call them if you got in a car accident, you’re pursuing a medical malpractice case, or something along those lines.
These lawyers will agree to help you with your lawsuit if you will pay them a percentage of your winnings, assuming they win anything for you. If they don’t win your case, then you don’t have to compensate them financially, so you won’t end up with less money than when the lawsuit started.
This makes sense if you’re filing a personal injury lawsuit. In such cases, you want an experienced lawyer who can locate evidence that establishes what you say happened.
If your lawyer wins your case for you, that will come one of two ways. They can either secure you a settlement offer from the defendant that you accept, or else they can secure a verdict in your favor if the case ever gets that far.
Often, personal injury cases don’t ever reach that point. It’s far more likely that the defendant will settle.
No matter which event occurs, you will then pay your lawyer 25%-40% of your winnings, on average. Hopefully, that leaves you with enough money to pay for your medical bills, lost wages, and also any noneconomic losses that you feel you suffered from the accident or incident that brought about your lawsuit.
You Can Pay an Hourly Fee
You can hire a lawyer and pay them an hourly fee. That number will likely vary. If you’re hiring a highly experienced attorney who has decades of experience in a particular niche, then you might pay hundreds of dollars per hour. If you’re getting a lawyer to look over your will to make sure everything seems okay with it, it’s doubtful you’ll pay anywhere near that much.
Many lawyers, especially those who don’t work in the personal injury niche, will want an hourly fee if you hire them. You might need a lawyer for all kinds of things throughout the course of your life, and knowing how this payment structure works makes sense.
For the most part, it will probably seem pretty straightforward. You might hire a lawyer because you’re divorcing your spouse, and you need advice. Maybe you’ll hire an attorney to help you draw up your company’s business plan. In that situation, you would want a lawyer who knows business law.
No matter what you need the lawyer for, they will propose an hourly fee, and if it works for you, then you can move forward. Remember, though, that your lawyer will presumably charge you when they do anything having to do with the job for which you hired them.
That means you must trust them to a certain extent. They will eventually give you a bill for their services, and you will likely have no choice but to accept it, even if you can’t necessarily corroborate how they spent every hour on that bill.
You Can Pay Your Lawyer a Flat Rate
You can also sometimes pay a lawyer a flat rate. An attorney might accept that setup if you want them to do a particular service for you, and it’s not an open-ended job prospect.
Your lawyer might do something for you like drawing up a contract. They may charge an hourly rate, but they may also offer you a one-time price instead.
It is sometimes hard to say whether a flat rate works better or if you should ask for an hourly rate. Consider how long you think the particular task might take for which you’re hiring this lawyer. If you don’t think it will take very long, then going with the flat rate might make more sense.
You Can Have a Lawyer on Retainer
You might also pay a lawyer a retainer fee. If so, that probably means you’re in a situation where you feel you will have regular work for that attorney or their law firm.
The average individual won’t need to ever have a lawyer on retainer. If you’re the owner or CEO of a company, though, and you find that people sue your business entity often, you might want to have lawyers on retainer then.
The term basically means that you pay a nominal fee to have this lawyer or law firm ready to do something for you at a moment’s notice. When you reach out to them, they will drop what they’re doing and handle the issue for you.
If you need a lawyer, then consider each of these fee structures. Usually, which one you should use will seem fairly obvious. Also, most lawyers will only work and charge you via the fee structure they prefer, which should make choosing a nonissue.