Legal fees are earned when provided.
In complex dynamic representations, there are several ways to make payment and to view and work through understanding the costs and fees charged.
We strive to create a written fee agreement and to have the engagement meet our compliance procedures for you and your internal and external bookkeeping, accounting, and tax requirements when paying for legal services.
First and foremost, we want you to fully understand our billing procedures and your payment obligations.
In general, we track all time spent on the work we do for you. That time is then recorded in a pre-billing format approximately 30-45 days after the work is done. That pre-bill is then reviewed, descriptions evaluated, and then when that step is complete, we determine the invoice is accurate. We send you a final invoice which shows the work billed in that invoice to be paid. If you have set flat fees or subscription services, we prefer to set these up on auto-payments or agreed upon single time or periodic payments. If possible for hourly representation matters, we estimate fees for transactions and litigation cases, and then along the course of that representation it often happens that matters get modified, expanded, limited or through verbal and authorizations by implication, you know what work is being done without a formal modification of the original engagement agreement.
Should we carry unpaid invoices, we will charge interest on accounts that are thirty days past due and exert an attorney lien in our work.
We send statements on a monthly or periodic statement basis which should show the various open invoices and any unpaid balance including finance charges.
We use our internal associates to help make entries of tracked work, and also our inside and outside accountants to make updates and send payment reminders should there be a delay in payment. We reserve the right to discontinue representing you should you fail to pay or make arrangements to pay.
At Zacks Law, we believe that in addition to our ethical duty to not create a prejudice against you in a current matter, we try our best to balance our workload to meet your expectations and also meet obligations regarding other clients and their matters.
We encourage respectful and conscientious dialogue on any billed invoice, statement, and payment arrangements that are expected so that you honor your obligations. If you have questions or concerns you will discuss this directly with your attorney and allow reasonable time and patience for them to work with our business and professional staff to provide answers if the attorney does not have the information available when you speak. We make reasonable efforts to separate the business issues from the direct work done in our representation to keep your attorney focused on legal services because we appreciate that hard payment deadlines and dates may not always be commercially and practically reasonable. We also know that as a professional you appreciate that earned fees need be addressed and paid timely.
We create engagements tailored to you.
We prefer to do so in written form. Our accountants prefer that we have "advance fee payments" and "retainers". Retainers are of two types technically; one an amount paid and earned when paid to keep the attorney on your team for their expertise; and also as an amount paid and earned by an attorney as periodic payments for a set scope of services. The historical nomenclature was for all advance fee payments to be called and treated as a 'retainer' however that has been refined by the Ohio Supreme Court to in terminology to be an advanced fee payment. We use our IOLTA (Interest Only Trust Account) account as required by the Ohio Supreme Court rules for any advances you make against unearned fees, often as an advance payment for ongoing litigation work which was estimated and due to our business process we required that we have in our account an amount of many based on the engagement agreement in order to accept the case, or for any escrow funds that we hold for a transaction closing., hiring other required approved professionals to assist us in your representation. IOLTA accounts do not earn interest as the interest earned is paid to the Ohio Legal Aid Foundation & Fund by the participating financial institution who does not charge for its services since this fund is designed as a public service to assist people unable to afford legal services.
For engagements involving your company, family or start-ups, we often request controlling parties guarantees of fees since often times the entity alone may be new or lightly capitalized, and there may not even be sufficient time to research credit or referral source vetting and creditworthiness . We consider you us to be professionals who respect that your need is imminent and delay in processing to meet out accounting needs and credit review could negatively impact your representation and feelings of urgency.
We enter into specialized reduced fees for specific start-up opportunities and include in your engagement a statement that should ethical concerns arise that you will be billed for our fees incurred in getting necessary ethics advice about how to resolve any ethical or disclosure issues should we be paid in equity or a form other than US dollars.
In certain matters, we will create a flat fee with defined service scope and cost parameters.
If you believe your situation warrants a contingency, a flat fee or some periodic payment approach, we will consider it but in these circumstances, we will still require an engagement agreement after you appreciate and grant informed consent.
Oftentimes, existing clients have new matters and we strive to have a new fee agreement executed which defines the scope of this new matter, however, should that not occur, the terms will be the ones for the prior matter as reasonably modified by the new matter particulars.
At Zacks Law, we believe that paying for professional services and establishing ongoing value and trust in the client-attorney and firm relationship, may be compromised if either party, us or you, becomes dissatisfied with the payment of legal services. Please talk to us if you encounter any issues and we will address these. We will track time but billing questions and conversations are not billed to you. If you feel that you have been billed inappropriately, we want to know and address it head-on to earn your respect as this part of our relationship involves important work in this two way street of legal service fees and payment accountability.
We have adopted various convenient payment methods besides individual, company, and third-party checks. We do not generally accept cash but if we do, there will be a receipt at the time the cash is received. Checks and other electronic payment methods have payment trials and thus these 'documents' act as the receipt and proof of payment.
HERE ARE SOME PAYMENT LINKS [ACCESS INACTIVE] THAT YOU MAY FIND HELPFUL:
CONTACT US TO ARRANGE ENCRYPTED ACCESS.
Link here to LawPay for credit card payments
Link here to Smokeball payment systems.
Link here to Intuit -Quickbooks.
Link here to direct payment from your chosen bank or financial account.
Link here to Confidential Discussion with Zacks Law Payment & Collection Coordinator
Link here to Venmo, Zelle or similar financial institution pay service
