Why we charge flat fees, not hourly
Hourly billing is a tax on asking questions. Here's why we don't bill by the hour, what the tradeoff is, and the one rare case where flat fees don't fit.
Most Florida probate firms bill by the hour. We don’t, and we never have. Every engagement we take comes with a price quoted in writing, before you sign anything. The price is the price — even when the case takes longer than we expected.
There are two reasons we run it this way.
Hourly billing is a tax on asking questions
If you’re worried about a clock running, you don’t ask the questions you should be asking. You hesitate before sending the email. You delete the third draft of the question and ask only the bare-minimum version. You wonder, mid-call, whether this counts as a “billable” conversation.
That dynamic is bad for the work. Probate is a months-long process where the family making decisions is usually grieving, scattered, and unfamiliar with the terrain. Reducing the friction around questions makes the work better. We hear from our clients more often, the issues surface earlier, and the problems we solve are smaller because we caught them earlier.
We can’t really do flat fees and also meter the conversation. So we don’t meter. Text us, call us, ask the same question twice — it’s all just covered.
We’re better at scoping than most firms
The other reason flat fees work for us is that we’ve done thousands of these and we know how the work goes. A typical formal administration runs 60–90 attorney-hours over 8–12 months. A clean summary administration is 12–20 hours over 6–10 weeks. We’ve metered it enough internally to know.
When a case ends up taking more hours than we expected — and it happens — that’s our problem to manage, not yours. The price was set when you signed the engagement letter. We absorb it. Sometimes it’s a small loss; sometimes the next case underruns and offsets it. Over a portfolio of cases, the math works.
That’s the deal. We trade a small amount of upside (charging more when a case is hard) for the predictability that the flat fee gives both of us.
Where flat fees don’t fit
Litigation. If your case is contested — a will challenge, a removed PR, a partition action between heirs — flat fees stop making sense, because the timeline is genuinely open-ended and depends on the other side’s choices. We don’t litigate, and the rare time a case needs it, we refer to specialists who price it differently.
Out-of-scope add-ons. A formal administration that turns out to need a federal estate tax return, or a sale of investment real estate during administration, or a creditor-claim objection that goes to hearing — these get priced as add-ons because they’re not in the standard scope. We quote those in writing too, before doing the work.
99% of probates are uncontested. Statistical reality. Will challenges are rare. Most heirs cooperate. Most creditors file routine claims that get paid in routine ways. For the standard case, flat fees apply.
The honest tradeoff
We won’t pretend flat fees are universally better. For very simple cases that close in 4 weeks of light work, an hourly firm might come in cheaper on paper. We’re priced for the median case, not the easiest one.
But what we get in return is a predictable engagement letter, a calm process, and a relationship where you ask the dumb questions and we just answer them. If that tradeoff fits how you want to handle this, we’re a fit. If not, we’ll honestly tell you so on the consult and refer you to someone whose pricing model matches.
The first call is free either way. We’re not converting consults into engagements aggressively — we’d rather you find the right fit than land on us reluctantly.