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!!