How do criminal attorneys charge fees?
Certainly, one of the biggest concerns when a person comes to see me for the first time are fees. How much are they? And how am I required to pay? Most criminal lawyers do not charge by the hour. They charge, generally, a flat rate fee, and the amount that that fee is going to be certainly depends on the seriousness of the case and the amount of work the attorney expects to put into the case. So they generally charge a flat rate fee and is generally required in advance. So in other words, if it’s a DUI and the fee is $25,000, that fee is paid up front, and then that’s the end of the matter. You don’t receive bills for hourly billing and that type of thing. There are other ways to structure the case of payment rather than strictly flat rate. So sometimes I will charge a flat rate up front unless and until the case get set for trial, then I will charge another flat rate trial fee. So that flat rate can fluctuate a bit for different parts of the case, but I don’t know of any criminal defense lawyer who charges by the hour. I’m sure it happens in some types of white collar criminal offenses involving corporations and those types of thing, but almost every criminal defense lawyer charges on a flat rate system.
