How Much Does A DUI Lawyer Cost In Ontario?

So you have been charged with a DUI in Ontario, you’re looking around for the best options. And one of the most important questions that you have to ask yourself is “what do DUI lawyers charge to represent you in Ontario, well that’s a great question first of all. And I want to talk about the billing methods first and one billing method is which I don’t like frankly, and our firm does not do is hourly rate billing, so you have a lawyer for example who charges you five hundred bucks an hour, well what are the ultimate fees, I mean the hours can go on for a hundred hours, you know, we don’t know. I find it a method that is getting a little bit passe. You really want a block fee billing and that’s where the lawyer will quote you in case the case resolves, say to a careless driving, without having a trial, or pleading guilty or getting the best possible result versus going to trial. That’s exactly what our firm does, we are going to give you a resolution quote without going to trial, and we are going to give you a trial quote, in other words, start to finish. And that’s what, I think the majority of lawyers are doing now that now. It’s a wide range of fees, I can tell you kind of average. I think that you look at, you know, the Toronto area, and really across the province, a lot of lawyers are charging the ten’ish thousands of dollars range plus HST, type thing, that seems to be a reasonable fee, and a fair fee, I might add, for a DUI; and resolution quote, maybe five to six thousand dollars, that seems to be a typical average. Now there’s lawyers, there’s excellent lawyers who charge, way more than that for Toronto. I mean, I have seen some lawyers charge, twenty, twenty-five thousand dollars, pretty high fees. But hey, if you win your case, it’s certainly worth it. So, there’s a very wide spectrum. You’re going to want to ask your lawyer about their experience, why they are charging those fees, etc. I mean, there’s lawyers which command very high fees in the province, but I would say this, if you’re in a lawyer’s office and they are charging you like five’ish grand, for your trial or six grand, you really got to question their experience, because they are probably not high demand. I would think you are going to want a lawyer who is going to charge in the ten grand range. And maybe you want one of the top lawyers, in the province, you know at, twenty or twenty-five grand. It really depends on the case but I would try and caution you about hourly billings. If you are into an hourly billing structure with a lawyer, ask them to cap it at a certain number of hours, ask them to estimate or give it a budget of hours because, I don’t really believe, I have never done hourly rates for years, because I find it very inefficient, and you wind up writing up a bunch of hours and you can’t just start billing the client for a hundred hours because some cases may get very complex , it goes on and on , and it’s not fair to the client. So get some certainty, get that quote upfront, find out the experience level of your lawyer, how many trials they have done, that’s important. How many trials have they won this year. And it varies very widely across the province but if you are getting a very cheap quote from a lawyer you have got to question their experience in this area, just why are they charging so little. You know, sometimes you get what you pay for frankly.

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