Reasonable Legal Fees for a Divorce –Oxymoron?
A recent letter to the editor of the American Bar Journal Magazine said that one of the myths of divorce is that your legal fees will be affordable.
One of my clients said that a half hour of my time cost about the same as a piece of jewelry.
My partner, John Thyden, tells clients that a divorce costs about the same amount of money as a car. Then he says that your divorce may be a Volkswagon or a Rolls Royce.
Divorce lawyers charge by the hour and typically take advance fees called retainers. We are prohibited from taking contingent fees for divorces. Our fees are governed by the Code of Professional Responsibility which says that they must be “reasonable”. We are given a set of factors to determine what is reasonable and what is not. The factors include such things as how complex the case is and the amounts at stake.
Gary Cohen, a divorce lawyer in Greenwich, Connecticut represented a real estate developer in a marital estate worth one hundred million dollars. Mr. Cohen’s fee was $450 an hour. However, during mediation he asked his client for a three hundred thousand dollar bonus, which pushed his fee to $1,500 an hour. Now he is being investigated by state disciplinary officials to see if his fee was reasonable or not. From News 8 in Connecticut.
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