• Billing is generally tailored to the type of work you bring to the attorney. Some things are fairly cut and dry and the attorney knows about how much time they will spend to perform that work.

    Those cases might be billed at a flat rate meaning you pay a fee up front and the attorney performs the work for that flat fee. There may be out-of-pocket costs that you would still need to pay in addition to that flat fee, such as filing or recording fees.

    The most common billing structure is hourly. If the attorney believes they do not know how much time they will spend on a task, quoting too high of a flat fee would not be fair to the client and quoting too low of a fee would not be fair to the attorney. Hourly billing ensures that the client only pays for the time the attorney actually spends on their case.

    Billing is done in 1/10 of an hour. For example, if you call and discuss your case with the attorney and provide updated information or ask questions, the amount of time spent might be a .1 for 6 minutes or a .5 for 30 minutes depending on the length of the call.

  • This is a very common question and the most difficult to answer. Keep in mind there are many factors impacting the duration of a case from opposing parties to the judge’s availability to schedule settings. Your attorney can give you an outline of items that will need to be done and estimations of the time to accomplish those. Just remember these are guesses. Refer to the list of civil terms on our site to see more about timeframes.

  • Just like a visit to your doctor’s office, yes. This is because time we spend visiting with a potential client about a case we may or may not take is time we are not spending working on existing client work. Our consultation fee is often half or less than half of the attorney’s hourly billing rate. You get the benefit of an hour of our time heavily discounted.

  • We quote you a deposit on a case that we believe will be sufficient to get us started and do not begin work until the deposit is paid. Just like you, we have expenses to pay and families to provide for and we cannot work for free. We strive to quote deposits that are reasonable based on the amount of time we know we will need to spend to get the case started. After the initial deposit is used up, you will be responsible to pay any invoices upon receipt or we may ask you to pay another deposit to cover additional time.

  • All office visits are by appointment only. If we have asked you to bring by documents for us to scan, the front office assistant will work with you to make sure we get everything we need. If you need to speak directly with the attorney, you will need to schedule a call or appointment. Our caseload is very heavy and we have a lot of client work that needs to be done on very specific timelines. The only way we can fairly budget attorney time and make sure clients’ deadlines are met is to carefully plan out the attorney’s time for the day. You help us budget the necessary time for you and other clients by scheduling our meeting times.

  • We will need you to fill out an intake form that is designed to get us the basic information for the type of case you have. These can be provided to you upon request for you to complete prior to your appointment. While some of the questions might not make sense to you, we only ask the questions that we will have to answer for the court or in preparing your documents. Remember we do not like unnecessary work any more than you do and we will not ask you to provide things we do not need. Anything beyond the intake information that is needed for your case we will request of you.

  • We have several ways you can send us information for your case. You will have a client portal with our office that you can upload documents to at your convenience. We also have a texting feature on our software that saves all of your texts to your client file for future reference. You can also email information and documents if you cannot make it by the office. Of course you are always welcome to just bring in information or documents, but we do strive to offer you options to save you time.

  • The Petition is the document that outlines the Plaintiff’s position in the case and all allegations against the Defendant. This document is filed with the Court and then a summons is issued by the court (once the clerks have reviewed and accepted the filing).

  • The summons (a document signed by the Court clerk) notifies the Defendant that a suit has been filed against them and how long they have to respond to the allegations. This document must be served on the Defendant in order to move the case forward.

  • Defendants have 30 days from the date of service of the summons to file an Answer, a document either admitting or denying each and every claim made in the Petition. Failure to file an Answer within the 30 days is deemed an admission that the Petition states accurate facts and there is no dispute.

  • Discovery refers to the formal procedures used by parties to obtain information and documents from each other and from witnesses. The information is meant to help the party prepare for trial or settle the case.

    Once a party is served with discovery requests, they have 30 days to respond unless they ask the judge for additional time and the judge grants it. Generally extensions are not more than an additional 30 days, and sometimes they are not even this long.

  • These are specific documents filed asking the judge to rule on something or order something while the case is pending. Sometimes the judge can grant a Motion without a hearing, other times a hearing must be had so each side can argue why the Motion should or should not be granted.

  • Once a Petition and Answer are filed, generally the court will set the matter for hearing. Some courts will set a hearing date upon issuing the Summons while others require that you request a hearing.

  • Generally, a court date is going to be a few weeks to 30 days out (sometimes more) depending on how loaded the Court’s docket is.

  • Keep in mind that courts have thousands of cases pending in their jurisdiction alone and this takes up a significant amount of time. A docket of 100 cases is not unusual for a single day in front of a judge.

  • Special setting days for a court may be made up of hearings that last several hours.

  • Trial settings can be one entire day for that single case or weeks at a time for that case. These settings tend to be the farthest out – sometimes months and months away.

  • These settings are just status conferences, generally. This is an opportunity for the attorneys to discuss the case without other cases or clients or the office interrupting that discussion. This is also a chance for the judge to be given an idea of what the case is about, what the parties contend, and what the status of the case is (where the parties are in the litigation process and if one side needs to be reprimanded for not making a good faith effort to comply with the Rules of Civil Procedure).

    Parties do not usually need to attend these. Your attorney can attend on your behalf.

  • If the hearing is over a technical, legal argument, generally only the attorneys need to attend. If the hearing is over something that is fact- intensive or requires testimony or documentation to prove, the parties and any witnesses may need to attend.

  • Deposition. A proceeding in which a witness or party is asked to answer questions orally under oath. A court reporter is present and takes down the entire proceeding. If you schedule a deposition of someone, you will probably have to pay for the court reporter, which can be very expensive.

  • Written questions sent by one party to the other to be answered in writing under oath.

  • A request from one party to the other to hand over certain defined documents. The other side will most likely request that you produce for inspection (and copying) documents supporting your assertions or claims in the case.

  • A request from one party to the other to admit or deny certain allegations in the lawsuit.

  • An order telling a witness to appear at a deposition.