What Does it Cost to Be Your Own Lawyer?

A lot of the people that contact us want to know what it will cost for Be Your Own Lawyer to do work, or how much they can expect to spend until they have finished their case.

The answer is that usually, we just don’t know. We’re not dodging the question. If we knew for sure how much time we will need to spend answering questions or doing research, we would be happy to say, “for doing this job we will charge “X” dollars. The problem is that we don’t ever know upfront how much you will ask us to do.

Even though we can’t nail it down specifically, we can give a ballpark idea on some cases, and maybe that will help.We can also promise you that it will bea much, much less than hiring a lawyer to do things you can do for yourself.

First, we have set as a target, in order to figure things out, an hourly rate of $85. It’s not etched in stone, but it’s a good ballpark. How did we arrive at that? Well we tried to take a lot of things into consideration and come up with something that would be attractive and fair to you, and at the same time compensate us for our time, work and experience.

So what went into coming up with that figure?

First, we admit readily that our overhead is real low! We don’t pay rent, or big phone bills. We don’t have a lot of secretaries and paralegals running around.We don't spend a lot on office furniture or supplies. We save a lot of money - we pass those savings on to you.

Next we looked at what attorneys were charging for the kinds of services we can provide. We think that's a relevant number because that's what you're looking at paying if you don't handle things yourself with our help. Typically hourly rates we found were in the range of $250 on the low end to $500 on the high end.

Finally we tried to take into consideration what we would need to be paid in order to make doing work more attractive than sitting on the beach drinking beer. We’re human too!!!

Tossed all that into the pot and decided that if we got about $85 an hour for our time, its fair to everybody. It’s an amount that we can live with on our end. You get to save a lot - like  75%  to 80% of what it would cost you to go out and hire a lawyer. Seemed like a fair number all the way around!

So if we quote you a fee, it’s not just a number picked out of the air. It’s based on how much time we think something will take, based on the $75 per hour.

Having said that, a couple of points. There is a lot that we don’t charge anything for at all.

Got a quick question? Send it on – we don’t mind trying to answer. Email is pretty cheap these days….

We never charge you anything to look at a case or an issue and to let you know if it’s something we can help you with.

We’ve provided a library of articles on our website at no cost, that will provide a lot of information that we hope will be of help to you.

So all things considered, we think we’re providing a pretty good service at a very reasonable cost!!

When You Shouldn’t Try to Represent Yourself

In the last post I talked about the general question of whether or not you should consider being your own lawyer – whether you could really represent yourself in court or otherwise. In that post I referred to the fact that there were some cases where is was not appropriate.

I’d like to talk a little more about that today.

To borrow from what is usually a stupid analogy, but in a few cases can have merit, “would you perform surgery on yourself?” Of course not and there are some cases where you clearly need the services of an attorney. We actually go into detail, beyond the scope of this blog on that very question on our website – here is the link to that specific page: http://www.beyourownlawyer.org/sub-page/11/should-you-represent-yourself-.html

Let’s look at some. Examples of cases better handled by lawyers:

Criminal cases that could land you in jail, or with a serious criminal record. Makes sense! Losing a case involving some money is one thing. Losing a case and spending years in jail with your life on the scrapheap – a little different.

Juvenile Justice Case. Same thing applied to your child. The potentially devastating results to a child’s entire life from getting into these squalid systems make it imperative that an attorney, knowledgeable in these matters be retained as early in the proceedings as possible.

Complex Civil Case. Some case are just so complicated in terms of the numbers of witnesses and documents that you could never really hope to keep up. Small firm and solo practice lawyers even avoid these as being too demanding of resources.

There are other cases that are just not suited to being handled without an attorney. At Be Your Own Lawyer while we suggest that with help you can handle most legal matters on your own, we’re at the same time realistic. One of the things we offer, at no cost to you, is to take a look at a case and tell you upfront if its something that you’d be better of hiring and attorney for.

Can You Represent Yourself?

The big question people ask is if it really is possible to represent yourself in legal matters.

Of course it is!!

Does that mean you can be your own lawyer in every case? Just as emphatically, of course not. You would not want to try being your own lawyer if you were on trial for a criminal matter. If you tried to represent yourself in a complex civil matter involving different parties, thousands of pages of documents and dozens of witnesses, you'd get crushed.

But the reality is that the average person doesn’t have those kinds of issues. What they have are day to day legal matters such as setting up businesses, getting information and resources on the best ways to do things, and dealing with litigation and court cases that are fairly straightforward.

The legal profession in America has gone to great lengths to protect itself in every way. They have to. There are so many lawyers in the United Sates that competing with each other is bad enough – competing with the concept that people can actually do things for themselves is unimaginable!!

With rules limiting the providing of virtually any legal assistance to licensed attorneys (rules made by lawyers for lawyers – surprised surprise!!!) the legal profession has created a virtual monopoly, which they jealously and fervently guard. We’ll be talking more about that in future blogs.

Bottom line is that the legal profession has gone to great lengths to convince the public that it is impossible for anyone to successfully represent themselves. They often do this with witty little analogies.

One that we like is “would you try to perform surgery on yourself?” A response to that kind of comment should be simply - how incredibly stupid!

We freely tell everyone that no, you should not represent yourself in every kind of case, and so no, to use the analogy, you should not be performing surgery on yourself. But there’s no reason you can’t go down to the drugstore and get some cold medicine without first seeing a doctor.

So no, you can’t represent yourself in every conceivable case. If you’re arrested and looking at criminal charges  get a lawyer! If your child is in trouble and embroiled in the juvenile justice system – get a lawyer!

But if you’re trying to deal with the day to day legal issues that we all face from time to time, at least take the time to talk with us at Be Your Own Lawyer. You really will be surprised to learn how much you can do for yourself!!!

Welcome to Be Your Own Lawyer Bog!

What we hope here is to provide you with some thoughts and insights on legal matters in general, talk about the pros and cons of representing yourself in legal matters, and because life is drab without a little fun, take a few pokes now and then at the legal system as it exists in America today.

Since this is the first post to the blog, let us introduce ourselves.

We’re three semi-retired lawyers from different parts of the country, who have found ourselves in Central and South America. We say semi-retired because we failed miserably at retirement! None of us are in active practice any longer, but all of enjoy the law and enjoy sharing collective hundred years or so of legal experience. Our website is www.beyourownlawyer.org. What we offer is full legal research and support for people that want to handle their own legal matters. Our services are offered on sort of a menu basis – everything from answering simple questions to helping someone put together a complete case for trial in court.

Before you ask, no we don’t do it for free. Social security doesn’t go as far as it used to, we like a little more varied diet than rice and beans, and even down here, cervaza  is not as cheap as it used to be. What we do promise though is that what we charge will be a fraction of what you would pay to get a lawyer to do the same things that we can help you do.

One thing we think it’s important for people to understand is that even though are all lawyers, we will not be your lawyers. You’ll see this mentioned on our website, and we’ll be repeating it in future posts here. Another thing that you need to understand is that we in all probability are not licensed to practice law in your neighborhood. So even if we wanted to, we couldn’t represent you. Throughout everything you read on our website, in our publications and here, please don’t lose fact of this. We like to think we’re not all that stupid, and we’ve sure been around the block a few times, but we’re not practicing or as a practical matter, licensed attorneys.