HOME EMAIL ME ABOUT ME LAWYERS GENERALLY Specialist v. Generalist Big Firm/Small Firm Billing Costs of a Lawyer DISPUTES / LITIGATION Mediation Arbitration Commercial Litigation Bankruptcy Litigation Estate / Will Contests CORPORATE Executives/Employees Stock Option/Compensation Non-Compete Agreements Purchase/Sale of Business Entrepreneurial Ventures GAY/LESBIAN RIGHTS Buying property together Being in business together Wills & Estate Planning Health Care Proxy Burial Rights Marital Rights Tenant Apt. Succession 'Divorce' & Splitting up ESTATES Probate Estate Litigation Estate Tax law REAL ESTATE WILLS & ESTATE PLANNING Simple Wills Health Care Proxy Testamentary Trusts Inter Vivos Trusts Estate Tax Challenging Wills BANKRUPTCY Creditors Debtors BRIAN M. DELAURENTIS Attorney at Law 36 West 44th Street, Suite 610 | New York, New York 10036 | tel 212.354.6300 fax 212.954.5081 | Brian@DeLaurentisLaw.com Lawyers General Specialist v. Generalist Another common refrain in the legal community is specialization - that each attorney should be shunted to one narrow sector of the law. This compartmentalization, in my opinion, creates lawyers with massive blind spots - counsel who lose the forest for the sake of the trees due to their specialty. My practice is intentionally general because it allows me to see creative options to resolving a given issue. Equally important is my own personal benefit, generalization keeps things interesting because of my caseload's variety. Specialization is important for certain areas such as patent law, criminal law, or child custody issues. I do not practice in these areas and will refer you to another attorney if this is your legal need. Costs of a Lawyer Most people blanche at the per hour fee of an attorney. "What am I paying all that money for?" is a common refrain. The answer is value. You are paying me to add value at a fair price to your interests. If you are involved in litigation, you are utilizing my experience, litigation, and negotiation skills to maximize the best possible result for you in litigation. If you are starting a new business, retaining my services will allow you to access my experience and foresight for your benefit to avoid future problems and obtain the best possible start to your fledgling venture. If you are drafting a will, you receive the value of ensuring that your estate is distributed according to your wishes when you are no longer present to do so yourself. As you will see on this webpage, my experience is both broad and deep as I have been able to successfully achieve many difficult goals for my clients. On several occasions, I have advised clients and potential clients that my services would not economically achieve their goals, or in other words, the value of my services will not be worth the price you have to pay. No attorney likes to be in a position where his or her fees are exceeding the value of the underlying representation. I always try to avoid these situations, and would advise you at the outset if I felt my representation would not add sufficient value to your interests. Billing For my hourly clients, you will receive a detailed bill for each month I spend time on your behalf. I bill in tenths, the minimum being 0.1 hours for an activity. For each activity, I provide a description of the service provided. In additional, reimbursable expenses are included on each bill broken out by vendors such as Federal Express, court filing fees, etc. If you should ever have a question about a bill amount, payment, or description, please do not hesitate to bring it up with me. I will be happy to explain how the bill was determined. For my fixed rate clients, you will usually receive a bill at the end of the representation for the agreed upon amount plus the reimbursable expenses. Typically, I do not detail my efforts in a fixed rate representation but will do so if you request it at the outset. Big Firm/Small Firm American culture ingrains us with the notion that bigger is better - super size it all! Of course, this concept is designed to sell more of everything. Nobody spends advertising money to curb consumption. However, in practicing law, I have learned that the opposite is true because disseminating information and maintaining a coherent strategy are exponentially more difficult with large teams of lawyers. Critical opportunities are lost because lower level attorneys are not aware of, or sufficiently experienced enough to gain an unseen advantage at one stage that will reap benefits later on. My competitive advantage is that I know each of my cases from top to bottom, and your legal budget is not spent on writing memos, emails, phone conferences, meetings, or other unnecessary multi-layered efforts that disseminate information to the organizational whole which also happen to ensure the firm's overhead is covered for the month due to the larger legal bill. I do what is right and necessary because unlike other firms, I do not have that large overhead expense to cover each month. My client base is broad and my pipeline always full so that I do not need to drag a case out simply to milk it for fees. Time and again, I have seen opposing counsel do so which simply drives the costs unnecessarily higher for everyone. Efficient, economical legal activity and thus, smaller fees, is a paramount goal for me in every representation.