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Choosing Contingent Fees or Hourly Fees is a risk shifting decision. Each has advantages and disadvantages to both the client and the attorney. There is no advance certainty of how much legal work is necessary so neither the client nor the attorney can do more than predict or guess. The variables are how long legal work will go on and whether recovery prospects make it economically justifiable to spend either new money chasing older bad debts or whether the attorney should put in time to chase a given debtor. Some cases turn out to be easy and settle or pay quickly. Most Don’t. By the time they reach Judgment, debtors often deny, deflect, deceive, ignore, are insolvent, go bankrupt or conceal assets. Some Sister State Judgments are only partially collected and some are never collected. See
Ready
To Start
page.
CONTINGENT FEE
On a contingent fee, we get nothing if we don’t recover for you. Also you don’t need to put in fresh new money during the collection efforts for legal fees. You only pay the out of pocket costs. We take the risk on putting in our time. See our
Sister State Contingent Fee Retainer
Agreement.
HOURLY FEE
Hourly fees are charged based on actual time spent on your case. Some cases can result in rapid collection. Others take extensive effort to collect. A few require extensive effort but do not have favorable outcomes. There is no way to know in advance. You take the risk of paying for legal services without assurance of outcome. But if you make the decision and the case is easy, you will pay less than the contingency fee. If you like this option use our
Hourly Fee
Agreement.
DOMESTICATION ONLY FEE
Occasionally (but only occasionally)
someone wants a Sister State Money
Judgment domesticated only. Assuming
there is only a filing and service with
no opposition, the fee for this effort
is $1,500 plus out of pocket expenses
(total about $2,000). Since we can’t
predict in advance that it will be easy
to serve the Judgment Debtor, or that
there will be no Motion to Vacate,
anyone seeking this fee is asked to
engage us with our Hourly Fee Agreement.
Once the 30-40 days have expired, your
decision will be whether to go forward
with recording liens and doing
additional collection efforts. |
