I was recently represented in a foreclosure.
I agreed with my lawyer that he would represent me, and I would pay $670 per month.
There was a lull in the case, where the court just kind of… sat on a motion my lawyer made.
In fact, my lawyer’s motion was in early November.
The next time the court did anything, it was at the end of May, when it scheduled a phone conference for late June.
Would it be usual and customary for me to be on the hook for the monthly “Foreclosure Defense Program” for the entire period where the court was just kind of sitting on its hands?
I haven’t broached the topic of what I find to be a somewhat curious situation with my lawyer yet.
This is what you negotiated. You didn’t negoatiate an hourly rate for work performed. Sounds like you owe him $670 a month until the case is completed, regardless of how many hours he works.
Depends on what your fee agreement says. Most commonly, a lawyer isn’t paid a monthly retain regardless of the amount worked. (fees must be “reasonable,” and I don’t think the Bar would consider such an arrangement reasonable in most cases). Maybe your lawyer said he’d do it for $6700 and let you spread the payments over 10 months? If it really is some find of monthly fee, tell your lawyer you’ll suspend payments while the court is considering your motion.
I can see rational arguments either way, so it really has to come down to what the contract says.
Also, just because the court is sitting on a motion doesn’t mean that your lawyer isn’t doing anything. As an accountant, I know from experience that I can spend a lot of time on an “inactive” case while waiting to hear back from auditors and the like. Not $670 worth of time, but it’s not insignificant.
He did right around $700 worth of work during that period.
Via the ‘Goclio’ website I was getting a monthly invoice for any hours worked… when hours were in fact worked during a given month.
Do you have a fee agreement? What does the fee agreement say about compensation? It does sound like a flat fee that is being spread out over several months.
On an active case it’s very easy to generate a bill much higher than $670.00 in a month.
The retainer agreement’s fees section reads:
**
[Partner 1 Name]'s time will be computed at $300 per hour (1/4 hour fractions). Associate time will be billed … $200 per hour. Paralegal time will be billed at $75 per hour and Law Clerk $100 per hour.
Time will be recorded for:
research
drafting pleadings
conferences
phone calls
document prep
investigation of facts
prep for court
other services neccesary
Out of pockets expenses directly attributable to this case … will be charged to you. **
Oooh. Here’s a part that will likely be dispositive: You have further agreed to deposit $670 per month to the trust account due and payable on the 1st of each month while we continue to represent you beginning [DATE].
…
Your retainer will be held in our trust account and applied by us against fees and costs billed to your case, as and when they are incurred.
[Lines noting it’s my money 'til they bill against it…]
Any fees remaining on deposit can be used to make a contribution to a modification of your mortgage agreement or if they remain unearned by this firm they will be returned to you within 30 days of the termination of our representation of you.
Okay.
So, during the lull, I accumulated a substantial balance in the account.
I was getting additional statements showing the hours.
I stopped sending in payments for a few months, and at the end of the day there was a voluntary dismissal and I wound up owing the firm something like $200.
I cut a check for that $200, and thought I was good.
Then I got a letter asking me to send in the total amount of $670 times months of representation minus payments I had made.
I meant to call about that, but forgot.
Then I got a repeat of that letter a few weeks later.
I think I’m standing on good ground calling them tomorrow and letting them know that their billing people are confused.
ETA:
I just remembered…
It turns out that they are, once again, representing me. In this case however, it’s a contingency fee case.
Perhaps their billing people are confused, and think the retainer agreement covers me once again.
could be confusion. The monthly payments are to keep your retainer balance in the black. They can’t actually take t hat money out of trust until they earned it. You have paid them everything they have earned (in this matter). Call and straighten it out. Should not be a problem.
In the US at least, that’s not the end of the story, because lawyers owe a fiduciary duty to their clients. Some fee agreements are OK and some are not. I think flat monthly flat fee agreements have been enforceable, but the fact that they agreed to it isn’t determinative, and it doesn’t necessarily mean it would be enforced regardless of the facts.
It sounds like the OP just needed to read his contract as opposed to asking a bunch of strangers on the internet to guess things about his relationship with his attorney.
I certainly did, but there was a valid question in the OP.
It wasn’t asked purely out of selfish interest. The topic interested me in and of itself.
Would it be usual and customary for me to be on the hook for the monthly “Foreclosure Defense Program” for the entire period where the court was just kind of sitting on its hands?
No, not usual and customary. But that’s not the standard. It could be unusual and still appropriate. As we have learned, however, you were only being billed for actual time, the monthly payment was to keep the trust account solvent.
…which is usual and customary. The straight-up monthly fee arrangement would be unusual, to say the least. It was covered among the list of “don’ts” in my professional responsibility class.
And, by way of followup, this was the answer.
I called, the secretary verified I was fine.
Bills kept coming from the automated system for two months, so I sent a follow-up email, and they finally stopped the system from doing that.
