How we charge and how to pay your legal fees
Dealing with a family issue can sometimes feel challenging, but we’re here to reassure you. We are understanding and because we are also very experienced in family law, we’ve almost certainly encountered and helped to resolve similar issues.
If you instruct us to represent you, we will deal with everything on your behalf including liaising with your partner or their solicitor, the court and any experts or third parties as required. We will prepare all necessary paperwork on your behalf, enter into negotiations for you and where necessary secure representation for you at court. Of course that will incur fees and we will provide you with an estimate at the commencement of your matter which we can review throughout. We charge on an hourly basis for the work we carry out on your behalf. We will at the commencement of your matter provide you with a list of our charge out rates for all the lawyers in the team who may assist in your matter. We raise monthly invoices in most cases based on how much time we have spent working on your matter that month, and we seek payment of those invoices each month so that everyone can keep on top of the fees incurred. We will ask you for money on account before we commence work to include expenses such as court fees or barrister fees.
Alternatively, you can instruct us to act for you only in relation to specific pieces of work such reviewing a draft agreement and turning that in to an order after mediation for example for reviewing proposals made by your partner. This is sometimes referred to as “unbundled services” and we then provide an estimate for that bespoke piece of work, seek such funds and then invoice for the same. We can act as a consultant working along side you in your matter and providing advice on an adhoc basis. In such circumstances we will invoice you as we go for each piece of work that we do.
Legal fees can be expensive; most people pay them from income, savings, investments, or via credit cards (we do not take American Express). Some borrow money from friends and family however we will need to go through some formalities to obtain money laundering evidence on their behalf so that we know where those funds have come from.
If that is not an option for you it may be possible to apply for a litigation loan to cover your fees and we can explain and help you through the process.
You may be able to make an application for your spouse to pay your legal fees in certain circumstances if you do not have your own funds or access to them, we can also help you with that too.
We have offices in Southampton, Woking, Richmond, London, Lymington and Guildford and offer specialist family law services to clients nationwide. Contact us for more information on our legal fees and the various funding options available.
