Low cost can mean a couple of different things. Low cost can mean that the person is fresh out of law school and they need to find a way to get clients. So they are going to offer their services for a very low fee. The whole point of the low fee is that this person has absolutely no experience and needs to get the experience at your expense but they are not charging a lot. The person that they are going for is someone that feels the need to have a private lawyer or street lawyer but doesn’t have a lot of money. It can also be an attorney that has had a lot of bar complaints that has not had a lot of success and they are just trying to get anything that comes through the door and they’re willing to not charge a lot of money.
There Is a big law firm out here that does tons of advertising. That has a certain jingle associated with them and I have talked to 3 of their former clients who decided to fire them and hire me. While they did not charge very much and the spread it out to maybe $500 a month, they were not showing up to their client’s court appearances leading to their clients being arrested. They were not charging a lot of money but spreading it out for about 9 months or so. If the person failed to make a payment they were keeping all the money and then dropping the client. They basically made a lot of money without doing a lot of work.
Low Cost DUI Attorneys Are Often Willing to Work Less and Drop Clients Thus Keeping All the Fees
In one of the cases that I took over from this big law group, they literally told the prosecutor that the person was going to plead guilty and when I talked to the client about what type of plea negotiation had taken place, and what type of plea agreement was made available. The client said they did not even know there was a plea agreement available. Sometimes these low cost attorneys can really hurt your case because they are playing on the numbers that they will get enough people to make it worth it for them to keep going with doing very little work and being willing to drop people and keep all the money. Get them in, get them out, bleed them and move on to the next person.
So you get what you pay for and when it sounds really good that you’re only paying $500 or less than $1000 for a DUI defense lawyer, it is probably not worth the money. Good DUI defense lawyers do cost money. On the flip side of that, there are some bad attorneys who charge a lot of money on the theory that you will think they were good because they charged a lot of money. So again it comes down to doing your research, research is important. See what other people say, see what type of testimonials there are, see what type of qualifications they have, what type of awards they have and what type of accomplishments they have achieved.
What We Pay For is the Attorney’s Time; How Does an Attorney Use that Time for a DUI Case?
It is the amount the time they put into it, it is about their knowledge and expertise, how many seminars they have gone to, how many seminars they have taught. A lot of it has to do with the times that it takes to talk to the clients, review the file, explain to the client what their thoughts are on the case and the court appearances themselves. People don’t really think about the court appearances and the time it takes to do these court appearances. A lot of times, I will show up to my client’s court appearance without my client having to be present and depending on what court the case is in, that can take a few hours just sitting there, not being able to be in my office, not being able to meet with other clients and not being able to work on cases.
For someone like me, I end up working seven days a week and a lot of my time is spent focusing on my client’s cases during weekends when I have more free time, when I am not running around the court and when I am not meeting with clients. I will devote hours to each individual case to make sure that I am seeing everything in the police report and that I can fully represent my client and give them the benefits of my years of experience. So that they know, they are getting value of the money that they have paid me.
