Anyone who has gone through a hotly contested divorce can be shocked and amazed at the size of their legal bill. Divorce cases are typically handled on an hourly basis by attorneys, and their hourly rate in the St. Louis region can vary from $250 up to $400 per hour.
Lawyers typically ask for large retainers and then bill against those retainers at their hourly rates. Unfortunately, this can lead to abuses by attorneys, as they are anxious to exhaust the retainer so that they can request additional funds.Attorneys are bound by certain billing standards which require them to bill in an accurate manner, and to provide adequate detail to determine what services were rendered.
Itemized bills are required by the Missouri Bar and the ABA. Unfortunately, attorneys can bill in such a fashion that it can make it impossible to determine actually what work was done, by whom in the firm and at what rate. Many divorce attorneys also try to charge for their paraprofessional staff, which may or may not be considered unethical by the Missouri Bar. Under no circumstances should a client ever be billed for legal work done by a non-attorney.
One possible solution to the problem is to have your attorney’s bill submitted to a legal audit company. Legal audit companies have developed over the last 20 years in primarily the insurance defense and corporate billing markets. Large companies that employ lawyers on a regular basis learned in the early 1980s that their attorneys were overcharging them for mundane legal tasks, which really did not require services of an attorney.
Legal auditing firms began to utilize computer software to analyze the attorney’s billing sheets and to reduce the size of the bill for inaccurate billing, vague billing tasks, or unreasonable hours billed during one calendar day. Most legal auditing companies promise their clients that they can find savings of at least 15-20% in any given bill. These firms typically work on a flat percentage basis of the amount that was billed the client, and their reports are oftentimes useful in obtaining refunds from the law firm. Sometimes litigation is required in order to force the attorneys to pay back the overcharges.
If you think you have been overcharged by your divorce lawyer, you should contact the Meehan Law Firm, where they have access to legal auditing experts who can be of assistance in obtaining a refund.