How can you go about proving a lawyer charged to much?
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 at
10:45 am
I buying prescription drugs online found a business lawyer that came highley recommended and charged by the hour. Unfortunetly, he managed to bill me for over a thousand hours. He wants more than I have.
Most local bar associations have fee arbitration and/or mediation services to help people in your situation cost-effectively resolve fee disputes with their lawyers. First look at your attorney-client fee agreement and see if it specifies that you use a certain fee mediation service, and if so just contact them directly. If your attorney-client agreement is silent on the subject, though, just contact the bar association in your city and ask them what programs are available for you locally. Go to the city level bar association first, not the state.
Just be sure you have a valid case before you start a process like this, though. If you signed an hourly contract and he can justify the hours he put in based on your service requests and instructions about the case, you are probably not going to get a reduction in your fee, and he may be able to recover his costs for the fee arbitration time and process as well. And, once you have challenged him this way, you will never be able to use this attorney for legal services again because you have created a conflict of interest.
take them to court….. oh wait, that may not be a good idea.
You can’t. Lawyers can charge whatever the hell they want. They can charge you by the hour and for any additional expenses. And the higher recommended they are, the higher their fees will be.
good luck … do you have an itemized bill? take them to small claims court to recoup some of it … but otherwise you’re SOL
good luck, they help each other. not to mention their contracts are almost always bullet proof
Review the bills to see what he charged you for and whether the hours are being charged at the agreed upon rate. Did you have any written fee estimate beforehand?
One option is to simply not pay the bill. He may be willing to accept less, especially if there is some real question about whether you received value and if you really can’t pay the bill.
If you feel as though you were cheated, you can complain to the state bar association.
Call them and ask them how much to file chapter 7? Then tell them if they want any money from you before you file come up with a resonable amount. I think they may change their tune. If they don’t I would file and be done with it. They are an unsecured creditor and would get nothing.