Reduce Legal Fees
on Your Divorce

In order to reduce legal fees, it helps to understand how legal costs are determined.

Divorce lawyers will bill you in one of three ways. In some cases, as in an uncontested divorce or simple real estate transfer, they may charge a flat fee. If you are quoted a flat fee, be sure to find out if that includes filing fees and disbursements. If not, find out what other costs will be added to that flat rate.

In some cases, divorce lawyers will ask for a retainer. A retainer is an amount of money paid up front from which costs are deducted as the lawyer works on your case. Most retainers are non-refundable so you if your case costs less than the amount of the retainer, you will not get the unused portion back.

The last way divorce lawyers bill is by charging an hourly rate of anywhere from $100 to $450 an hour. When hiring a divorce lawyer, ask what their hourly rate is. You are not necessarily looking for the absolute cheapest lawyer but if one who charges $150 an hour is as a good a lawyer as the one who is charging $450 an hour, go with the less expensive one.

The bottom line is, with lawyers – time is money!

So how can you reduce legal fees?

• Watch for courier fees. My lawyer wanted to charge me a $30 courier fee to take a mortgage registration up two floors in the same building. I said I would deliver the papers myself shaving $30 off my fees. Lawyers can make a lot of extra money padding such things as courier costs. You may be able to reduce legal fees by delivering papers yourself instead of paying a courier to do it.

• Prepare for your divorce. When you go to your lawyer, bring all the necessary information with you thus avoiding repeat trips. It may help to look at some free divorce forms from your area to get an overview of what you will need for information.

Having all the necessary documents together will decrease the time it takes your lawyer to prepare your case and will obviously reduce legal fees.

• Avoid small unnecessary phone calls. Remember time is money. Let’s say your lawyer charges $160 an hour and has a minimum billing unit of $40 or 15 minutes. If you call and ask a question and that call only takes 2 minutes, you will still be charged $40 or 15 minutes.

Before you make a call with a question, check the Internet or your family court in your jurisdiction first to see if you can get an answer to a general question. You can also make a list of several questions to ask during one phone call instead of several shorter calls. If you are going to be billed for 15 minutes, make that 15 minutes count by asking several questions at once.

• If you are going to court, be prepared and bring all your required documents. If you are not prepared and the judge reschedules, you are paying for additional court and legal fees that could have been avoided. There is also the possibility that the judge will rule in your spouse's favor because you failed to produce any documentation.

• Be honest with your lawyer. Do not hide any information that could interfere with your case.

• You can greatly reduce legal fees by being willing to negotiate. Spending thousands of dollars in legal fees to keep the big screen TV is not a wise use of your lawyer’s time. With the money you save, you can go buy a new one.

Decide what is worth going to court for and what is not. This is where an experienced lawyer is important. They can give you a good idea, based on experience, what they feel the likelihood of winning a fight is. If you don’t stand a good chance of winning, you may be better served finding a way to negotiate and settle out of court. If the issue is one worth fighting for, you can also consult with a couple of other lawyers to see what they feel your chance of winning is. If none of them feel you have a chance of winning, you may want to bite the bullet and find a suitable compromise.

• Share a lawyer. If you and your spouse have agreed on all the terms of the divorce, you can reduce legal fees by contracting one lawyer to do the work for both sides or do your own divorce. You can still get another lawyer to review the agreement to ensure you are getting a fair deal before you sign the papers if you want.

Caution – if at any time during the process of sharing a lawyer, you feel that lawyer is favoring your spouse and is not treating you fairly, you can seek out your own legal counsel. I often see cases of sharing a lawyer where one spouse hires a lawyer and tells them that the other spouse will agree with whatever they decide. The other spouse, because of lack of income, lack of knowledge or wanting to avoid confrontation agrees to unfavorable terms without seeking their own legal counsel; often regretting it later.

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