Legal Fees

Alternative Fee Arrangements

The Katz Firm welcomes the opportunity to tie our success to your success.  We have experience with sharing business risks with clients.  Doing so furthers the bond of trust that is the foundation of the attorney-client relationship.  Lawyers should not be enriched by taking a long time to complete a task or by being otherwise inefficient.  In addition, the traditional law firms’ pyramid structure emphasizes the use of inexperienced attorneys, thereby inflating costs.  Clients deserve a fee arrangement aligned with their goals.  In this way, the firm and the client become partners working together to achieve the client’s business objectives. For that reason, in addition to the traditional hourly fee model, the firm offers Alternative Fee Agreements including contingent fee arrangements which make litigation affordable to those who simply cannot afford litigation on an hourly basis.

• Contingency fee
• Fixed fee
• Flat monthly fee
• Reverse contingency fee
• Hybrid / blended fee
• Optional success-based bonuses
• Retainers

Not all cases lend themselves to an alternative fee structure, but the flexibility is available in appropriate circumstances.  These alternative fee arrangements reflect the value provided to the client, and the success of our efforts, instead of basing a fee strictly on the number of hours worked.

Traditional Billing Methods

For some cases, especially when working on behalf of a defendant, billing on an hourly basis makes sense. Many businesses have relied on the hourly system for years, and prefer it. While not the primary value proposition, the Katz Firm keeps costs to the Firm’s clients low. To some degree, this is a result of competitive hourly fees. However, to a larger degree, the Katz Firm endeavors to bill fewer hours by being much more efficient than the large firm attorneys that are on the other side of the Firm’s cases. While a goal of other firms may be to increase billings by increasing inefficiencies, the Katz Firm does more with less, and focuses on outcome-determinative aspects of litigation with the goal of persuading the court or jury to secure the best possible result.

In some cases, the Firm may use a flat fee to handle portions of a case, while using an hourly model for other portions of a case, especially those phases that may be more difficult to predict. The Firm may also bill by the hour at a reduced rate in exchange for success bonuses based on the outcome of the case as compared against predetermined benchmarks.