What does probate cost?
Retail stores enjoy the convenience of easily displaying prices for the products they sell. Selling physical products makes evaluating costs, investment, and other business necessities much more predictable. This predictability and convenience is possible because a retailer can order and sell identical items at consistent price points.
Pricing for legal services necessarily differs, however. Unlike the retailer’s sale of identical items, each case that comes across a lawyer’s desk is unique. This uniqueness naturally demands a unique approach that requires custom-tailored research, evaluation, argumentation, document preparation, hearing preparation, and in-court performance (among many other factors).
As a result, we cannot ethically quote a price until we have at the very least met your family, understood your unique circumstances, and reviewed any available legal documents that you might have.
Flat Fee Options
Texas has arguably the very best probate laws in the entire country. The quality of our laws produces a comparably efficient and inexpensive probate process. Consequently, for many cases, we are comfortable quoting a flat fee. This means that you don’t have to worry about our office billing an hourly rate for every second spent on the phone with you, or for every minute spent reading your emails, etc. We believe in this model because we have found that it opens up communication with our clients, and provides them with much more comfort and predictability.
Does an unusual case occasionally arise that requires an hourly rate? Do straightforward cases occasionally require an hourly rate for a limited portion of the needed work? Sure. From time to time, cases present such strange legal issues and such an unpredictable trajectory that quoting a flat fee is frankly impossible. If your case is truly that unusual (and very few are) we will communicate this to you before we start working on it, and we will do our best to chart out what needs to happen.
Further, even if we anticipate a complication, we will still quote a flat fee for everything that is at least predictable. Every probate needs to meet certain requirements and satisfy certain procedures. Because we know in advance exactly what those necessary basics entail, we are comfortable quoting a flat fee for those specific predictable services. If a complication arises, we can then finish the case on an hourly rate.
Ultimately, again, our goal is to provide predictability as much as is possible.
No-pressure Consultation
If you need the legal services that we provide, we invite you to get in touch so that we can set up a time to meet. Meeting with us requires no additional obligations. No credit card numbers. No high-pressure sales tactics. Just an opportunity to get together and to comfortably discuss your family’s needs in a no-pressure environment. Finally, to make things easier, we also decrease our normal hourly rate for that initial consultation so that you don’t have to worry about making a huge upfront commitment.
Please feel welcome to call us at (281) 803-5878.