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When it comes to looking for help from a legal standpoint, it can be incredibly overwhelming to try and find the right type of person to help or to find the money to pay for legal fees. Preparing financially for anything that requires legal representation can be a major headache that you hadn’t planned on. Whether it is for something as bitter as divorce or a custody battle for children, it is helpful to know that you have the right financial support behind you. Here are some of your options to help.
Legal Expenses
There always appears to be hidden costs or things you didn’t factor in when hiring a solicitor. The way the charges are worked out depends on whether the legal work has been contentious, which means with court proceedings, or non-contentious (without court proceedings). With both cases, the bill should contain all of the right information to see what type of work has been done and what exactly you are being charged for. If you have a query, you can get the bill checked by the court.
Bills For Contentious Proceedings
If the case ended up going to court, your solicitor could send you a summary of the costs, known as a gross sum bill, or a more detailed bill showing the items. If you get a summary, you can ask for a bill that has the detailed items within three months. But if your solicitor has started to sue you for the money, you cannot ask for the detailed bill. If you do ask for a bill containing detailed items, this will be replacing the original summary. It could be for more or less than the summary bill.
Bills For Non-Contentious Proceedings
As the work in this instance does not involve the court, it may have tribunals instead. Through this, the solicitor may be happier to give you a more detailed breakdown of the work if you ask them.
Other Ways Around The Legal Fees
Depending on your needs, you could seek legal advice for a pre-agreed or a fixed fee. This may be for a small amount of time, possibly up to half an hour. This is handy if you have a case that you think is worth pursuing, like accidents or injuries. You can always look online for specific details. When it comes to a fixed fee, it does not depend on your earnings, it is the same for everybody. If you check locally, you can see who offers services in your area for a fixed fee or even for free.
If you cannot afford legal aid, there are firms that provide pro-bono (free) aid. But depending on where you are, there could be a lengthy waiting process and these firms are not able to provide help on cases such as family, but a firm online, like http://rokolaw.com/ can cater for family needs.
Getting legal help will never be an easy thing to navigate through, especially if you have no background in it. But if you know the basics or certain parts to the fees you might not have been aware of, this will help you overcome your legal issue.
Great post as usual Dan. I like paying good lawyers (the ones that don’t operate like a taxi meter and are pleasant to deal with) for stuff like conveyancing and incorporation. But for wills & estates, I can do those on my own as I do know how to write contracts (and my wife is pretty detail oriented so we make a great team when it comes to sifting thru complex and/or overly wordy legal agreements) and there’s lots of books as well as online templates you can copy, paste and modify to suit your needs. Otherwise, it’s more than a thousand bucks for a couple to create a will, which is not 100% required (to get a lawyer I mean). All you need (provided you REALLY know what you’re doing) is 2 witnesses around to put their signatures on the will itself.