Attorneys Fees vs. Cost Of Case

[Music] Hi this is Stuart Albertson with Albertson and Davidson and I want to talk to you about attorneys fees versus costs of a case so there's a distinction you'll generally get an engagement letter from a lawyer saying hey you're gonna hire me to go in and contest a trust or a will or whatever it is that you're wanting to do maybe perhaps you're bringing a financial elder abuse claim and you're gonna get this engagement letter and part of that engagement letter is gonna have some terms in it that say you're responsible for the attorneys fees and costs if you're hiring a lawyer on an hourly basis or if you're hiring a lawyer on a contingency fee basis they will describe the attorney's fees and the costs that they will front in a case but that what they won't want reimbursed at the end of a case so if I haven't full totally confused you at this point yet let's just talk about those two components attorneys fees and costs attorneys fees are what the attorneys fees are if you hire a lawyer at $300 an hour those are the attorneys fees on an hourly basis going forward if your lawyer spends two hours on a project it'll be six hundred dollars in attorneys fees whereas if you hire your attorney on a contingency fee basis for 40% of the recovery of whatever it is they recover on your behalf let's say they recover a hundred thousand dollars for you under that contingency fee agreement and it's a 40 percent attorneys fee they would then you do the math forty percent forty percent of a hundred thousand dollars would be forty thousand dollars in attorneys fees that would go to the lawyer and you would receive the remaining sixty thousand dollars okay so we understand attorneys fees what are these costs are they in addition to attorneys fees yes the cost of the case are how much it costs from a specific standpoint from an invoice standpoint to bring the case forward if you do photocopies let's say it's 10 cents a page that's a cost if you hire somebody to do court reporting for you for depositions that's a cost if you file the case with the civil court or the probate court and there's a 450 or $500 file that's a cost and so that's the distinction between attorneys fees and costs costs are the hard cost to run the case that are everything but attorneys fees and attorneys fees that's what you agree to pay either on an hourly basis or on a contingency fee basis and that's how attorneys fees and cost [Music] [Applause] you.