Free lawyers, by hours, by commission… there are several systems of work and charges when it comes to lawyers, and they also have to do with the type of legal service you request, the level of priority that will be given to your case and the result that you are looking to reach with legal help.
Like you and all the people who work, the lawyers’ time has value. A lawyer is a person who has spent a good part of his life studying and acquiring the necessary experience to understand how laws work and to know what are the best strategies to ensure that defended or defended can achieve fair solutions, and although a lawyer must have a vocation for service, being remunerated for the work that one does is also everyone’s right.
Are there free lawyers?
There are some free lawyer community services that employ attorneys who work ad honorem, that is, voluntarily, without charge, but they do it during their free time, that is, their case will not be the priority, they will be dedicated less hours, and you You can not demand results. The lawyers for free can be a tremendous help to solve our doubts or explain some aspects of the law, but when it comes to taking a case, the situation may be complicated.
As we have said in another post, in most situations where we deal with the law, time plays an essential role in winning a case, since there are expiration periods, that is, after a certain date you will no longer be able to file a claim and recover what you lost. A free lawyer is a lawyer who can not guarantee the fulfillment of deadlines, since in general, you need to give priority to the cases that allow you to make a living. In the long run, if you lose forever your chance to seek justice due to an expiration term, the cheap, or rather, the free, will rather be very expensive.
Charges for hours
On the other side of the spectrum of free lawyers, are lawyers who charge for hours. Under this system, the attorneys will keep track of the hours dedicated to your case, and the attorney will issue a bill accounting for and charging each of these hours. This system is very common when the final result of the legal service will not be that the defendant will earn money.
If we need a lawyer to review a contract, or if we want to help us with a divorce or residency application, the result of this service will not be for the client to earn money. Therefore, the lawyer needs to make sure that each hour invested is paid, which is fair. However, it can also lend itself to excessive charges, or simply that a person with a tight budget has no way to access this service.
Charge by commission
In a commission system, the lawyer receives a percentage of what the client manages to recover thanks to the legal advice received. This payment model works only when the final result of the legal process is that the client receives compensation. If the case is not won, the lawyer does not charge you. This system combines “the best of both worlds”: the client does not need to have money in the wallet to receive legal advice, as in the case of free lawyers… but when the lawyer takes the case as his own and know that he can only earn money If the case is won for the client, the case becomes the highest priority for the lawyer.