What we check

If rates are not written down, you cannot tell whether the partner who quoted you $700 just staffed a $950 partner onto your matter.

Most engagement letters let the firm raise rates every January with no cap and no notice. Typical increases run 5-8% a year and compound quietly.

A firm billing in quarter hours charges you 15 minutes for a two-minute email. Across a year of small tasks this is the single largest invisible markup in most engagement letters.

Block-billed entries cannot be audited. You cannot tell whether the 3.4 hours was one task or six, or whether half of it was something you never asked for.

Without this, the firm decides how many people work on your matter, and your bill is the first place you find out.

Three attorneys on a 30-minute call is 1.5 billable hours for a conversation one person could have had.

When an associate rolls off, you should not pay again for their replacement to read the file.

An estimate is the only thing that makes an overrun visible. Without one, every bill is simply what it is.

An estimate you only find out you blew through when the invoice arrives is not a budget, it is a guess.

An open-ended engagement means any work the firm does is in scope and billable, including work you did not ask for.

A 3-5% "administrative fee" is pure margin on top of rates you already agreed to. It is not a cost the firm incurs per matter.

Per-page copy charges are a holdover from the 1990s. $0.25 a page for something that costs a fraction of a cent.

Firms pay flat-rate subscriptions for these databases. The per-search amount passed to clients often exceeds the firm's actual marginal cost by a wide margin.

Full-rate billing for time spent sitting on a plane is the standard the firm will use if you do not say otherwise.

Administrative work is overhead. If it appears on a bill, you are paying twice: once in the rate, once on the line.

A non-refundable retainer is money you cannot get back if you never use the hours or if the relationship ends. An advance deposit in trust is still your money until it is earned.

Rates of 1-1.5% per month (12-18% annually) are common and often start at 15 or 30 days.

A 15-day deemed-acceptance window means a bill you did not get to for three weeks is now final and undisputable.

An evergreen retainer is a standing draw on your bank account that is not tied to work you approved.

This is often a single dense paragraph. It can permit the firm that knows your cap table and your contracts to take on your competitor.

A retaining lien means a fee dispute can leave you without your own corporate records in the middle of a financing.

If leaving is expensive, every other negotiation you have with this firm is weaker.

You paid four hours for that NDA. You should be able to use it a hundred times without asking.

A cap at fees paid means a mistake that costs you your Series A is worth exactly what you paid the firm.

Arbitration for fee disputes is often reasonable. Arbitration for malpractice, in a forum the firm chose, is not the same thing.

If the engagement letter does not require line-item detail, the firm is free to send you a one-line invoice for $42,000 and you have no contractual basis to ask for more.

This is what turns every other item on this list from an opinion into a term the firm agreed to. Without it, an invoice audit finds "this looks like padding". With it, an audit finds "this violates Section 4(b)".

Firms rarely refuse to explain a line item, but having the right in writing changes the tone of the conversation.

A firm that invoices quarterly, or whenever it gets around to it, can hand you a five-figure surprise for work you would have stopped two months ago.