The attorney fees for DUI offences in Arizona fall in different ranges in a wide variety of structures for different attorneys. There are those that charge a rock bottom fee and those whose fees are much higher. When it comes to choosing an attorney, though, it is not always a good idea to go with the cheapest or most affordable.
Attorneys who are good start getting more DUI cases through word of mouth publicity. Instead of getting overextended and not being able to do a good job of their cases, most of these successful DUI attorneys raise their fees and thus take select clients.
Those attorneys that charge rock bottom fees are the ones to be wary of. Since their fees are low, they need to take up more and more cases to survive. What this means is that they have less and less time to devote to each case, which may not be the best thing for the client. There are also attorneys who advertise and have a sales team pitching for them. These attorneys too have to take up a lot of cases to meet the expenses involved in advertising and keeping a staff. These attorneys may not have the requisite skills, expertise or attention required to handle a case.
One needs to keep in mind that attorneys’ ethics prohibit them from entering agreements where the client pays them only if they win the DUI case.
Among the many variations to the fees structure available in Arizona, there is the flat fee structure, under which the client pays the full fees upfront, covering the entire range of work. This kind of an agreement is advisable for a client since under such circumstances the onus is upon the attorney to speed up the case in favour of the client so that the attorney can move on to other cases.
The other type of fee structure is one where the flat fee is spread over different phases. For example, the attorney may have a flat fee till a jury trial, and once the case proceeds to a trial, he or she will charge an additional fee.
The actual cost of hiring an attorney varies. Yet, one can expect an Arizona DUI attorney to charge anywhere between $3,000 to $15,000 for a first time misdemeanour, while the fees increases upwards from $15,000 to even beyond $25,000 for felony DUIs, excluding other costs and expert witness fees.
Some attorneys prefer to charge by the hour, with $300 an hour being a common rate. These attorneys seek an upfront retainer, upon which the billing is done. After the exhaustion of the original retainer, the client is asked to replenish it again. There are also some attorneys who adjust their payments based on the financial needs of the client.
