First Hearing! And Fee Setting

Sarah's Post

I had my very first hearing yesterday, which went even better than I expected. It was against a pro se mom who was asking for a modification to child support. The magistrate was very nice to me (I think she either sensed that I was brand new, or saw that I was 9 months pregnant and didn’t want to upset me and send me into labor).

 I am amazed at the amount of information that has been shoved into my head in the last three weeks! I knew I would need to learn both procedure and substantive law very quickly to survive as a new solo practitioner, but I don’t think I really understood how different family law would be from the civil litigation cases I was much more familiar with. I feel like the next time I deal with a motion to modify, I’ll have a much better idea of what’s important, what to do, and how the procedure works.

One thing both Rita and I have gotten some questions about is fee setting. To share with the group, I set my hourly rate based on asking at least half a dozen attorneys in downtown Minneapolis what they thought the rate should be for a brand new attorney. My hourly rate is $150.00/hour, which is actually lower than most of them suggested. But I feel comfortable with it until I have more experience under my belt.

I have also done a few cases now where I’ve set a flat fee. To do that I ask the more experienced attorneys in my office how long it would take them to do the task the client needs, then multiply that by my hourly rate. Then if it takes me three times as long as it would take an experienced attorney, at least the client is only paying for the amount of time it should have taken me. Since flat fees are dangerous, especially in family law where things seem to be more volatile than some other areas of law, I only do them when it’s for a single motion, or a single appearance. I draft the client agreement so they know I only will be writing this one motion, making this one appearance on a specific date, etc. Then we both understand if there are more issues afterwards, they will either have to renegotiate with me to help or they may be on their own. So far, this has worked well, because the clients are just happy to have someone helping them and to know up front what the cost will be.

  Everything with the practice is about as expected – I have some clients but not a lot. I have about four active cases I am working on currently, and two people I am waiting to get confirmation on that they would like to retain me. So I’m still doing some contract work to make sure I stay busy. Assuming I can keep the pace that I’m at, getting 3-4 new clients a month, the practice will be growing at a pace that I am comfortable with. And I definitely like my boss, we get along well.