Clients often wonder, I think, about how legal fees are determined in criminal defense cases. First of all, it’s customary to charge a flat fee to handle a case, in contrast to family law, where a retainer is posted and the lawyer bills at a specified rate per hour, or in personal injury law, where a percentage of the monetary award goes to the lawyer, net of expenses and medical bills. Other areas of law typically follow the retainer model. What case law and the State Bar rules indicate is that fees should be “reasonable,” an elastic term, but these authorities go on to elaborate that fees should be based on the length and complexity of the case, the estimated time involved, and the probability that the lawyer will be forced to give up other potential clients while handling the matter.
To go a bit deeper, fees between criminal defense lawyers vary according to experience, which, if you think about it, makes a rough kind of sense. Someone who is Board Certified in Criminal Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, possesses a “certificate of special competence” in that area of law, and will surely charge more than someone who has a general practice, who has less than five years of experience, or who has just left the District Attorney’s office. The more years of experience one has, the more likelihood that that lawyer has had some or a lot of experience in the particular case or issues that are at hand, and the better likelihood of a favorable outcome.
To illustrate this a bit more, there are quite a few strategic decisions a lawyer must make when representing a citizen accused; these can be as subtle as which prosecutor in the court to approach (some prosecutors are much more reasonable in their offers and estimations of the value of cases than others), what time is best in the case to seek an offer (or whether to seek one at all), what offers fairly reflect the strengths and weaknesses of the case, and the likes and dislikes of the particular judge in whose court the case is filed. As I’ve blogged about recently, a new decision must now be made by clients in misdemeanor cases in Bexar County: whether to waive a jury, which is a difficult decision to make even in the best of circumstances. These are just a few of the many decisions which must be made by the lawyer (or, by the client in consultation with the lawyer).
Expertise in the law and the “landscape” the case resides in are essential for a favorable outcome, and it’s not realistic to expect this kind of hard-won specialized knowledge to come cheaply. Those potential clients who assume that legal services are essentially all the same, and the only variable is price, are indulging in wishful thinking. The old adage “you get what you pay for” applies here with emphasis. If you care about your case, please don’t shop for a criminal defense lawyer based solely on price.