Our Legal Fees

Let’s have a frank discussion about legal fees at Berg Bryant Elder Law Group.

Starting with Us for Free

Can we help you? Do our services match your needs? What is our process? How are you different??

If you are interested in our services and have these general questions, you should complete our contact form for us to review your situation. We will respond to see if we can help you or not on basic principles. Do you have a Florida law issue? Do you have an elder law issue? This call is free.

If yes, you will be scheduled with one of our legal assistants for a Free Intake Call. Before the call, please complete a form we will email you upon scheduling. This form takes 10 minutes to complete, and you and our firm can exchange basic information quickly. This is the best way to get started with us.

If you want to get our attention to get your case started sooner, please tell us in the written forms and provide as much information as possible.

“Are Your Rates Reasonable?”

A recent survey of Florida attorneys revealed hourly rates for attorneys are between $100-633 per hour. Guess which practice area is at $633 per hour? Elder law, which is our practice area. Our practice has billing rates between $100 to $500 per hour. We are less than the average in Florida. There are way too many people who need our services compared to the 117 Florida Bar Board Certified Elder Law Attorneys who can provide those services (80,000+ total Florida attorneys).

“How Do You Charge?”

As elder law attorneys, we do NOT charge contingencies fees. We also cannot provide a senior discount–we include the senior discount in our pricing already.

Our fees generally are set as a flat fee with a cap on the number of hours worked for that fee.

The total cost depends on YOU.

What do you need? What do you want to accomplish? If you want cheap and simple solutions, then the attorney can instruct you how to accomplish cheap and simple, but we will alert you to the problems of cheap and simple. During that discussion, you may figure out that cheap and simple does not accomplish your goals or make it less likely to accomplish your goals. We believe in this type of counseling, which is part of our attorney consultation process.

Also, it would help if you took the time to research your issues on our website. Please don’t overdo it, though–we don’t want you to get overwhelmed and not do anything. The Initial Consultation with the Attorney will get you unstuck with many issues. Doing your preliminary research will allow you to understand your needs for our services and make us more efficient. Indecision and multiple planning meetings with the attorneys will affect price of services to implement your plans.

Our services will include plenty of counseling and written instructions to accomplish the tasks needed to meet your objectives. However, there are follow-up steps, data gathering, and confirmations of changes that need to be documented by financial companies. Do you want “done-with-you” services or “done-for-you” services? We do not charge the same for each case based on this principle.

We believe that a client who provides us with everything we ask should not be charged the same as a client who requires that we help them gather information regarding their case.

If the total fees are an issue for you, the best way to control your legal fees with any law firm is to follow detailed, written instructions and not rely on the law firm to provide services for tasks that most people can do, such as obtaining bank statements, waiting on hold with financial companies, and faxing forms.

For any firm offering lower legal fees compared to other providers of similar legal services, watch out for:

• Will you be given written directions to follow up on the attorney’s verbal instructions?
• Will you be helped and have your hand held through each small step of the process?
• Will the firm help you if you are “stuck”?
• What are the exact services, documents, and consulting provided to you?
• What steps are being skipped from law firm to law firm?

Want to learn more? Please read our complete guide on how Florida elder law attorneys charge and how elder law fee schedules work.

Starting with an Attorney in a Paid Consultation

If you want to get started right now, then a 30-minute call is billed at Attorney Kellen Bryant’s hourly rate—schedule by clicking here. We do not recommend this step for most people because 30 minutes is rarely enough to solve your legal issue, and we use our Free Intake Call process to see if we can fit you in sooner than the 30-Minute Advice Call.

Instead, we recommend a 75-90 Minute Initial Attorney Consultation for $500. You get started by completing our contact form or calling the office. During this meeting, we will:

• Understand your goals for the meeting and legal services.
• Learn about your situation without interruption or judgment.
• Patiently explain bedrock principles in simple terms.
• Respond to all questions in a calm respective manner and develop nuances to your planning.
• Agree on a course of action you deem best.
• Provide you a flat fee and a set number of hours of legal services for that flat fee.

“Why Don’t You Offer a Free Consultation with an Attorney?”

We do not offer free attorney consultations because clients are not served well. Free attorney consultations are sales calls. We give specific legal advice tailored to your situation, answers to questions, and actual planning. Let me tell you a story to illustrate this point:

Client went to a competitor in early June 2023. Client paid the competitor $10,000 for Medicaid planning services after a free initial consultation sales meeting.  The attorney promised a written plan two weeks later. That planning meeting was pushed back. The client called us and scheduled a consultation with one of our attorneys, and during that planning, we revealed the exact steps to protect assets and get Medicaid. The Client requested a refund from the other attorney and did not get much back — but the client did get the written plan from the attorney, which expressed some of the information revealed at our first attorney consultation, but missed the most significant cost savings issue! Plus, the attorney would not have completed the case before June, costing the Client even more money. We ended up spending the client down appropriately before the end of June. Our process produces results quickly.

“How Much are You Going to Charge Me After Sitting Through a Long, Paid Meeting?”

Again, we do not know your needs and what you want us to do. You know our rates now. We need to learn about you. Complete our contact form, and during your Free Intake Call, we will give you fee ranges for similar cases we previously handled. With that information, you can move on to the Initial Attorney Consultation with the idea of the total for the services you want and need.

Call Us Today
(904) 398-6100