Remember the $60, 8-Word E-Mail? Client Shares Hard-Learned Legal Cost-Control Tips
News of a law firm that charged nearly $6,000, including $60 for an eight-word e-mail, for a review of an office sublease, got a lot of reader response.
Now client Jennifer Walzer is providing more details about the matter, as well as her newfound knowledge about how to control legal costs. Contrary to what some assumed, it wasn’t a BigLaw firm but a small shop of 10 to 15 attorneys at which the $2,500 charge she thought had been agreed to morphed to well over twice that amount, she writes in the You’re the Boss blog of the New York Times.
And she doesn’t expect a complaint to the managing partner, which one reader suggested, to be effective, she notes, because the lawyer in charge of her matter is the managing partner.
Meanwhile, she has been told that her landlord paid his lawyer a total of $1,100 to draft and revise the sublease in the same transaction in which she was charged nearly $6,000 to review the document.
Some tips offered by readers do seem likely to help prevent such problems in the future, though, she writes. Among them: Get the firm to agree to a fixed fee, get the fee agreement in writing and make a “business sense” review of any retainer agreement, striking out terms you find unacceptable.
For more cost-cutting tips, read the full article.
Earlier coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Ouch! Bill for Office Lease Review Nears $6K, Including $60 for an 8-Word E-Mail”
