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Fran Crawford

Handed over a retainer? Here is how it turns into a final bill

A plain account of trust accounts, six-minute billing, paralegal rates, disbursements and top-up requests, and what a careful reader checks on every statement.

Handed over a retainer? Here is how it turns into a final bill
Money handed over as a retainer usually sits in a client trust account and still belongs to you until the firm earns it. It leaves the account only when an invoice is issued against it.

A reader-facing writeup of how family law representation is priced, what a retainer actually buys, and which parts of a separation people commonly handle without counsel. Written after working through it once, badly, and then properly.

01

Tenth-of-an-hour billing

Most family law work is recorded in six-minute increments, so any task shorter than six minutes still bills as six. Consolidating questions into a single email rather than several short calls measurably reduces the total.

02

Three rates, one case

Partner, associate and paralegal rates usually differ by a factor of two or three. Knowing which rate applies to which task is the fastest way to understand a statement.

03

The lag between work and withdrawal

Work performed in one month often does not draw down the trust balance until the following billing cycle. That delay makes a healthy-looking balance misleading in a busy month.

Disbursements explained

Filing fees, process servers, court reporters, transcripts, mediators and expert witnesses are advanced by the firm and passed through to you. They are separate from hourly fees and are frequently the largest single charges.

Expert fees are not negotiable by your attorney

An appraiser, forensic accountant or custody evaluator sets their own rate and their own hours. Your attorney can recommend one and can question the invoice, but cannot control the price.

Administrative markups

Some firms bill copying, postage, electronic filing and research databases as separate line items, occasionally with a markup. Ask before signing which are billed at cost.

A retainer is not a fee. In most family law practices it is a deposit, held in a client trust account that is legally separate from the firm's operating account, against which the attorney bills as work is performed. The money remains yours until it is earned, which is why the first statement matters more than the engagement letter: it shows you, in the firm's own numbers, how quickly the balance moves and what it moves for. Read that first statement slowly, because every habit visible in it will repeat for the length of the case.

The trust account, and what leaving it means

Funds in trust are drawn down when an invoice issues, not when work happens, so there is usually a lag of two to six weeks between a phone call and the withdrawal that pays for it. A careful reader checks three things on each statement: the opening balance, the total billed for the period, and the closing balance, and confirms that the arithmetic between them is clean. Any interest, any transfer, any application of funds to an old invoice should be shown as its own line. If a statement gives you only a closing number, ask for the ledger.

Six minutes at a time

Nearly all family law time is billed in tenths of an hour, which means six minutes is the smallest unit that exists. A two-minute call to confirm a hearing date bills at six minutes. Four such calls in a day bill as twenty-four minutes even though they consumed eight. This is standard practice rather than sharp practice, but it changes how you should behave: batch your questions into one email rather than sending five, and expect that a scattered communication style will show up as real money on the invoice. The entries themselves should name the task, the document, and the recipient.

Who is doing the work, and at what rate

A firm typically bills at least three rates: the partner, an associate, and a paralegal, with the paralegal often at a third to a half of the partner rate. Work that is genuinely clerical, assembling exhibits, calendaring, preparing a financial affidavit from documents you supplied, belongs at the lowest rate that can competently do it. What a careful reader checks is whether the same task appears twice at two rates, which sometimes reflects legitimate review and sometimes reflects duplication. Ask, once and pleasantly, and note the answer. Ask also who will actually appear at hearings.

Disbursements are not fees

Separate from time, the firm advances costs on your behalf and passes them through: the filing fee, the process server, certified copies, deposition transcripts, court reporter appearance charges, mediator fees, and any expert you retain, whether a custody evaluator, an appraiser, or a forensic accountant. These are usually the largest single-line surprises in a contested case, because an expert's fee is set by the expert and not by your attorney. Some firms also bill administrative charges for copying, postage, or electronic filing services. Confirm at the outset which of those are passed through at cost and which carry a markup.

Why the first estimate is the floor

The number quoted in a consultation nearly always assumes cooperation: timely disclosure from the other side, no emergency motions, no discovery disputes, one round of negotiation. Each of those assumptions is outside your attorney's control, which is why the estimate describes a best case rather than a range. When the trust balance falls below a threshold set in your engagement letter, often a fixed dollar figure or one month of projected work, the firm will send a replenishment request, and most agreements allow the attorney to withdraw if it goes unmet. Treat the first top-up request as information about pace, not as a failure.

The check that takes fifteen minutes a month

Read every entry against your own calendar. Confirm the date, the length, and whether the described work matches something you recognize; a call you did not have or a document you never saw is almost always a posting error and is corrected without argument if raised within the billing cycle. Watch the ratio of negotiation time to litigation time, since it tells you where the case is heading before anyone says so. Keep the invoices, because the tax treatment of support and property transfers is the IRS's remit and some fee categories are worth itemizing separately.

Ask for a written projection at the start of each new phase, discovery, mediation, trial preparation, and compare it against what the phase actually cost when it closes. Two or three of those comparisons will tell you more about your total exposure than any opening estimate could.