How California Divorce Attorneys Charge Clients

California divorce attorneys charge their clients for everything they do.  This includes reading or writing emails, phone calls, photocopies and even if they receive a fax from you.  The fees are very high when you use an attorney and you should know how your money is being spent before you retain an attorney.  We have many clients that were not aware how fast their retainers can be spent.

Here is the transcript of the video…

Tim: Right. So let’s talk about that. So let’s talk about the cost of Divorce, the cost of mediation because it can be very expensive or it can be very low cost.

It just depends of what direction you want to go.

And I found it interesting that you know about the point to and how they charge.

Lisa Scholz: Oh yes.

Tim: I worked for a law firm for several years out here. And I was just surprised how much money goes in to this and the way they bill.

Lisa Scholz: Right.

Tim: If you send and call an attorney an email. You’re getting billed for that for them reading it.

If you call them you’re going to be billed for that time. And you get charged in most cases in point six increments.

Lisa Scholz: Right.

Tim: So ten six minutes increments, so if it’s a one minute conversation you’re getting billed for six minutes. And if they charge $450 an hour that phone call cost you 20 30 or 40 bucks for—

Lisa Scholz: And it adds very quickly. I know I’ve had conversations where they received the bill for the month and are just blown away.

They didn’t realized what was being charged, what they were being billed for.

Tim: We’ve had people call us and say I just spent $5,000 on a retainer for an attorney and their assumption was that was the total cost.

Lisa Scholz: Right.

Tim: They thought, okay $5,000 we’ll get through this. They didn’t realize that that’s a retainer. I’ve done a lot of videos about this.

Lisa Scholz: Yes.

Tim: It’s a retainer. They get billed hourly, your photocopies, postage, phone calls, emails were all billed against that.

Lisa Scholz: Everything.

Tim: And it is gone in less than 30 days. And what I found is most of the time all that’s happened is the initial divorce papers were filed.

Lisa Scholz: Right.

Tim: And they’re served. No financial disclosures. Not even close to an agreement because that’s how it goes. I mean–