When a legal challenge arises—a car accident, a business real estate opportunity, a human rights claim against an employer—one of the first questions you’ll likely ask yourself is, ‘How Much Is a Lawyer?’ In this article, we explain some of the factors that determine fees for our lawyers in Kamloops.
1. Complexity
If your case is straight forward—meaning it’s simple to understand what happened and why, is not legally complex and involves just one or two parties—your lawyer won’t have to consult many people as witnesses.
For example, a driver gets rear-ended while stopped at a stop sign, there are no injuries and the damage to the cars is easy to estimate.
This is a case that’s not very complex and will cost less for a lawyer to handle than a case that’s more complicated.
Complex cases involve more:
- Consulting professionals in medicine, healthcare, rehabilitation, accounting, etc.
- Interpreting and explaining laws and medical opinions to present the case to the judge
Examples of complex cases:
- A sophisticated reorganization of several related corporations involving several people and companies and numerous corporate and tax laws to interpret.
- An injury case in which several medical professionals need to be consulted to determine a prognosis on the impact of the injury, along with economists and accountants, to determine future potential wage loss.
- A real estate development that requires an understanding of municipal zoning laws, geotechnical issues, possible impact on First Nations’ use of the land, and capital gains and other tax issues.
As you can see, in those cases, our Kamloops lawyers have to seek out and then mine through a significant amount of technical information so they can analyze and explain it to the client and perhaps, later, to the judge—in a clear and compelling way.
2. Expertise
Just like anything, with lawyers, the good ones cost more.
That’s because with expertise, they can harness their experience and knowledge in a subject matter and increase your chances of being successful.
In some cases, lawyers who have experience working in the geographic region may be more aware of local factors contributing to a problem or possible solutions, all of which can increase your odds of being successful.
3. Urgency
If the transaction or case has an urgent deadline, often the legal work will cost more due to overtime costs for the lawyer’s legal staff and to reflect the disruption to other work caused by re-directing resources to the urgent case or transaction.
4. Amount of fight in the other party
If the other party is determined to fight this case every way they can or is just plain difficult to deal with, your lawyer will have to invest more time and effort to obtain information, communicate and pursue the claim.
This is often a factor in cases in which people have a strong emotional stake in the outcome of a case, for example, where a proposed real estate development might negatively impact the value of a person’s home.
5. Value of the case
If we’re talking about a $1 million deal compared to a $50 million transaction, the high-value transaction may be more complex, meaning a lawyer would need to put more effort into the transaction to ensure a successful outcome.
6. Success
Now let’s say your lawyer wins that $5 million award when only $500,000 was expected. In the case of an exceptional success, lawyers’ fees might increase accordingly.
In litigation, it can be hard to accurately predict outcomes. If a client receives a significant and unexpected win, it may be fair to recognize the litigator’s role in achieving the surprising success.
7. Market
Hiring a lawyer in downtown Toronto or Vancouver may cost more than hiring lawyers in Kamloops, simply because of what the big city market can bear.
Are you wondering how much a lawyer will cost for your file? Get a better sense of fees by sitting down with one of our lawyers in Kamloops to discuss your case in more detail. It’s a completely complimentary consultation.
