Ask most lawyers what something costs and you will get some version of “it depends.” The answer is technically true and completely useless. You are trying to budget for a real decision, and you cannot budget against a running meter you never see.
We built our billing around a simple policy. You will know the number, or the realistic range, in writing before you commit to anything. And if anything threatens that budget while the work is underway, you hear about it from us first, with the reason why.
We call this our no surprise billing policy, and everything below is how it works in practice.
Before any work begins, you receive a written quote, itemized by stage. Where the work can be priced exactly, the quote is a fixed number. Where the honest answer is a range, we give you the range and tell you what would push the final fee toward the top or bottom of it.
Each stage of the quote also names the specific tasks that could increase fees, such as extended negotiations with the other side. You see the pressure points on the budget before you sign, so the final bill should never contain a surprise.
A meaningful part of our work is flat-fee. Where a matter has a clearly definable scope, such as an incorporation, a contract review, or a franchise agreement review, you pay one fixed amount that we agree on before the work starts.
A flat fee moves the risk onto the right side of the table. If the work takes longer than we expected, that is our problem to absorb. You are buying a result at a known cost, and we take on the uncertainty, because we price this work every week and you may be doing this once in your life.
Some legal work genuinely cannot be scoped in advance. Negotiations depend on how hard the other side pushes back. A dispute evolves as facts surface. For work like this, hourly billing is the honest structure, and we pair it with the protections that make it livable:
The point of hourly billing is to charge fairly for unpredictable work. The point of our policy is that unpredictable never means unaccountable.
Legal perfection is expensive, and some of it buys you nothing. You could spend a thousand dollars of lawyer time fixing an issue in a contract or a negotiation where the underlying risk is negligible in dollars, unlikely to ever surface, or unlikely to ever be litigated.
So we sit down with you periodically and make the judgment call together. Which issues are worth the spend, which ones are theoretical, and where does the money actually protect you. Sometimes the honest advice is to leave an imperfect clause alone, and you deserve a lawyer who will say that out loud.
Nearly every service we quote comes in two versions, and you choose the scope:
Neither option is the default. On your first call we will tell you plainly which one fits your situation, and it is often the focused one.
You will not find prices on this page, because a real quote depends on your documents, your deal, and your risk. What we can promise is that getting your number is fast and free:
Every matter at our firm starts with a written quote or estimate range, agreed before any work begins. Clearly-scoped work is usually flat-fee; open-ended work is hourly with a written estimate and our no surprise billing policy. You will have your number after a free discovery call.
Both, and the work decides which. Where the scope is clearly definable, we quote a flat fee. Where the work depends on things outside our control, such as negotiations, we bill hourly against a written estimate range, and we tell you promptly if the matter looks like it will go beyond the range, and why.
Yes. Every new matter starts with a free discovery call with a member of our team. If you are buying or selling a business, your consultation with a lawyer is free as well.
The quote itself names the tasks that could increase fees, so you know the pressure points in advance. If one of them materializes, we flag the change and the reason before the additional work happens, and we agree on the adjustment with you first. That is the no surprise billing policy doing its job.
Although written quotes and our no surprise billing policy remove most of the uncertainty from legal costs, every matter still turns on its own facts, and the right scope for your situation is a conversation rather than a menu. A good first step is to schedule a complimentary discovery call with our firm, or call us at 416-580-0345.
