Fees In Criminal DUI Cases – Not “Contingent” On Outcome
Many times, people wonder why do you charge fees and the way that you charge them. Why can’t you charge a contingent fee? Why can’t you guarantee that I am going to win or I get my money back? Well, the State Bar frowns on that and says that it cannot be done on a criminal case. Because the State Bar does not want an attorney gambling on your freedom because if you lose, you may be going to jail.
Therefore, we cannot charge contingent fees; it is illegal to do so. If I could, I would. However, contingent fees the next best thing to that is going to be flat fees that are basically charged out in increments. I do not know of any fairer system because most people would not be comfortably charging an hourly fee that would in my case run as much as $600 an hour. So we charge fees based upon how much time we know the case is going to take on average and that way you know what you are going to have to pay and not have to worry about some bill coming in for several thousand dollars that you were not anticipating.
