Two DUI quotes, same number. What to ask before you sign the fee agreement

A fee quote for a first-offense impaired driving case on the eastside usually arrives as one number, delivered in a consultation that lasts under an hour, at a point when the person hearing it is still working out what the arraignment date on the citation means. That number is not a price the way a repair estimate is a price. It is a bundle of separately identifiable pieces of work, some of which will certainly happen, some of which happen only if the case goes a particular direction, and at least one of which is almost always excluded. Reading the bundle is the whole exercise.

The pieces inside the number

Start by asking the firm to name the stages the fee covers, in order, and write down what they say. The licensing side comes first, because the deadline to request a hearing with the Department of Licensing runs from the date of arrest and does not pause for anything happening in district court. Then the criminal track: arraignment, review of discovery once the prosecutor produces it, pretrial hearings that in King County district courts often number three or four, negotiation with the filing deputy, and any motion practice. Each of those is real labor, and a quote that will not itemize them is harder to compare than one that will.

Discovery review deserves its own line in your notes even if the firm folds it into the total. On a breath case that packet includes the officer's narrative, the video from the patrol car and the station room, the instrument's calibration and maintenance records, the thermometer certification, and the qualifications of the technician who certified the simulator solution. Measurement traceability of that kind sits within the remit of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is responsible for the standards that give a reported number its meaning. Somebody has to read all of it carefully, and reading it is billable time whether or not the bill shows it.

Where trial sits in the quote

Most eastside fee agreements price trial separately, and there is nothing improper about that as long as it is stated plainly at the start. A jury trial in Bellevue or Issaquah district court consumes days, not hours, and it requires subpoenas, motions in limine, witness preparation, and a second lawyer's worth of preparation time before the first juror is seated. So the careful question is not whether trial costs extra but how much extra, when the extra becomes due, and what event triggers it. Ask whether the trigger is setting the trial date, the readiness hearing, or the morning of jury selection, because those are weeks apart.

Hourly, flat, and the hybrid nobody names

Flat billing gives you certainty and gives the firm an incentive to resolve the matter efficiently, which cuts both ways depending on whether efficiency serves your case. Hourly billing tracks the actual work, and on a case with a genuine suppression issue it can run higher than a flat quote or lower than one, with no way to know at signing. Many agreements are in practice a hybrid: flat through negotiation, hourly or a second flat figure for trial, with a retainer held against costs. Ask which one you are being offered, ask what happens to unearned money if the case ends early, and read the refund clause rather than accepting a summary of it.

Costs billed on top

Attorney fees and case costs are different categories, and the second one is where two identical quotes separate. An independent breath test expert to review the instrument records, a toxicologist on a blood draw, an investigator to canvass a bar for witnesses or to photograph the roadside at the same hour of night, transcripts of the licensing hearing, and interpreter time are all commonly billed as incurred. So ask whether costs are advanced by the firm or paid by you as they arise, and ask for a realistic range for a case like yours. A firm that has handled many of these can describe the shape of that range even if it cannot promise a figure.

Comparing two numbers that match

Put the two agreements side by side and check five things: whether the licensing hearing is included or quoted separately, whether trial is inside or outside the number, whether suppression motions are inside or outside, how costs are handled, and who actually appears in court. That last one matters more than people expect, because an associate covering the pretrial calendar is normal practice and worth knowing about in advance rather than discovering it on the morning of. Get the answers in the written agreement. A firm confident in its pricing will put them there without being pushed.