Tips for Saving on Legal Costs (Part 1)

Before we go into general tips on how to reduce legal costs, you must first understand why you approach lawyers for their advice / assistance in the first place.

In general, people go to lawyers for three main reasons (or a combination of these reasons) –

1. For legal advice – i.e. I need to know how does the law apply to me in my specific context / factual scenario (“Legal Advice”);

2. For drafting of documents – e.g. I need an NDA drafted (“Contract Drafting”); and/or

3. For litigation services – i.e. I need a lawyer to represent me in court (“Litigation”).

In these three broad categories, there are certain ways to reduce your legal fees - but for this post (and the next), we will just be focusing on general tips for reducing legal costs.

When you first approach a lawyer, they usually will offer you a free consultation. This would be to understand your situation and to work out what legal assistance you require. Even at this stage, there are already a few ways in which you can lower your legal fees.

Tip 1: Try Not To Accept An Hourly Rates Arrangement

Whatever you do, don’t just agree to allow the lawyer to charge you on an hourly basis. This allows the lawyer to basically charge any fee he/she likes as long as it’s justifiable. Of course, you are unlikely to approach the lawyer again if he/she over-charges but why take the risk if you can avoid it?

Instead, ask the lawyer for a fee estimate. This should be a rough figure of the total legal fees the entire engagement would cost you. In coming up with the estimate, the lawyer should already have a rough gauge of how much time is needed to provide you with the information or services you need.

[This series will be continued in the next post]

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