Most law firms don’t post their prices because they know what would happen if they did. If they listed their fees online, most visitors would close the page immediately. The numbers are high, and the sticker shock is immediate. Firms know this, so they avoid it.
They want to get you on the phone or into a consultation first: into a conversation where they can gauge your income, urgency, stress level, and ability to pay. Once they know those things, they know how to pitch you.
The primary objective of the phone call is to size you up. They want to know where the pressure points are: how frightened you are, how much you can afford, and how far they can push before you end the call.
Hourly firms do this to soften the blow of unpredictable costs that run into hundreds of dollars per hour with no ceiling. Flat-fee firms do it for different reasons. Once their numbers are public, they lose predatory flexibility. They can’t charge one person ten thousand and the next twenty for the same kind of case. Transparency removes that leverage. So they keep their pricing vague, talk about “customized representation,” and hope you don’t notice that vagueness is the point. And if their rates are public, any firm can undercut them by whatever amount is necessary to poach the case.
Your rank and years of service tell them what you make and what you stand to lose, so they can do quick math about how much pressure you’ll tolerate. If you depend on housing allowance, worry about losing medical care, or face separation that would cut off retirement or education benefits, those are pressure points. If you have family obligations, a clearance, or a civilian job waiting for you after you leave the service that will vanish with a conviction, those are pressure points. The goal of that first conversation is often to find the most tender spots. And that’s where they apply pressure.
To be fair, this approach works because the jeopardy you’re in justifies the price. A lawyer defending a service member against the loss of a career, pension, healthcare, or freedom is not selling hot air. The danger is real. The math that turns fear into motivation makes emotional and financial sense once the person grasps what’s at stake. It’s manipulative, but not inaccurate or technically unethical. The problem isn’t in the price, it’s in how the conversation is staged to reach it.
But here’s the heart of the issue: the cost would still be justified even if the fees were publicly available before the call.
There are three main reasons that even firms that use flat fees will refuse to disclose their fees publicly:
- They want to be able to charge different clients different fees, depending on how much they can squeeze out of them.
- They don’t want to be undercut by a competitor. We know that when we put our fees on the website, other firms can offer to do a case for less than what we charge; if they didn’t know what we charge, they couldn’t use that angle. They don’t want to be in a vulnerable position like that, so they keep their amounts hidden.
- They also know that if people see how much it costs for quality representation, many of them will get sticker shock and back out of the website before making that phone call.
They are afraid of losing control over when and how the money conversation begins.
We publish our fees for a simple reason. We want anyone who contacts us to know their financial commitment in advance. Nothing ends a good consultation faster than a number the caller can’t afford. It’s uncomfortable for the caller and attorney. We would rather talk with fewer people who already understand the cost than cast a wide net and most calls end with disappointment. When someone reaches out to us, we want to talk about their case, not break bad news about money. Transparency up front spares everyone that awkward moment.
And, frankly, your pressure points are none of our business. In more than two decades of consultations, we have never played the game of emotional arithmetic: adding up your pay, benefits, or medical coverage to frighten you into hiring us. We don’t need to. Anyone facing a UCMJ allegation already knows what they stand to lose.
Transparency is a form of respect. When money is discussed openly, it builds trust on both sides. Clients who know the terms before they call can focus on what really matters: whether we’re the right lawyers for the fight.
Why Some Firms Don’t Give Free Consultations
Some firms charge a consultation fee as a filter. Most people who call civilian law firms can’t afford to hire them, so charging for the meeting weeds out callers who aren’t likely to come through with a fee. In sales speak, these firms want to spend their time talking to qualified buyers only, not tire-kickers.
Civilian attorneys learn quickly that firms spend a lot of time fielding calls that have no real chance of landing a fee:
- Callers who can’t afford an attorney at any price.
- Callers who are price shopping, ringing one firm after another harvesting prices, without any real regard for the quality of services being offered.
- Callers who aren’t looking for help with anything the firm does. Even if the firm has UCMJ, criminal law, court-martial, and so on posted all over the website, some people will call with legal issues completely unrelated to the practice. Family law, VA issues, landlord-tenant complaints, etc.
- Callers who “just have a quick question,” with no intention of hiring a lawyer.
- Callers looking for free advice who lie about being in the market for a lawyer.
Firms that charge for a consultation are trying to spend time talking with military members who are funded and have an interest in what the firm does, and not wasting unpaid time on other calls.
It’s understandable. And from a business perspective it’s probably wise. We consider consultation fees ethical, especially when a firm rolls the consultation fee into the costs of services if they get hired, but we don’t use them. The goal of a consultation is to help people understand their situation, not test their ability to pay. And people looking for help with a UCMJ case are already in distress when they start looking for an attorney. We find it’s pretty easy to filter out the unserious calls without chilling the conversation before it begins. We absorb it as a cost of being in this line of work.
It’s also worth noting that firms charging for consultations rarely publish their fees and often use the same sales tactics once they have a “qualified” prospect on the phone.
What the Marketing Books Teach
We’re sharing these trade secrets, but they’re not really secrets. This stuff is also in books you can get at Amazon. One best-selling manual for lawyers instructs readers to “build trust, rapport, likeability, and authority in a prospect’s mind BEFORE you reveal your price.” The logic is simple: once the client feels safe, the number sounds smaller. The same book describes the goal as making the lawyer “cheap in comparison to any and every other alternative.”
These guides tell lawyers to behave like retail salespeople: warm-up the prospect, delay discussions about price, and reframe the fee as a bargain compared to the ruin that will happen if the lawyer doesn’t get hired. “The end results will be determined by demonstrating that your fee is much lower than the price they would have to pay if convicted,” one passage reads. Another line spells out the psychology: “They’ll realize, ‘I have GOT TO get money to hire this attorney… In fact, I’m saving money by hiring him, not spending.’”
Later chapters call this the “spiel,” a practiced script built around a chart of speculative losses. The author instructs readers to anchor the client’s fear to a number drawn “NOT FROM YOU, but from a third party, authoritative sources.” In his example, the authoritative source is a list of everything a DUI conviction might cost: towing, bail, fines, insurance hikes, probation fees, even a “decreased earning ability due to criminal conviction.” The total at the bottom ($12,771 in this case, a number he made up) becomes the anchor. The lawyer then “steps in to save the day, crosses it out, and puts [his] minuscule retainer fee in comparison.”
Apply that same psychology to a military case. You start with the service member’s rank and time in service, add their housing allowance (dependent rate, ideally), health care, dental care, clothing allowance, tax advantage, combat pay, hazard pay, and the “value” of PME. Multiply it by the number of years left until we hit our twenty. And then the retirement, which is worth over a million, easily.
That’s the “authoritative figure.” Then you step in and say, Look what you stand to lose if this goes sideways. My fee is a fraction of that.
It’s manipulative, but it’s not inaccurate. Given what’s truly at risk (a career, benefits, reputation, sometimes freedom) the math checks out. What’s wrong is doing this with simulated empathy, when it’s an exercise in creating and then exploiting fear.
The book even draws its examples from grocery stores and infomercials. “Your local grocery store uses ‘Saving vs. Spending’ language, and now you know why.”
So What Does it Cost?
Based on reports we get from the field, this is what we believe market rates are, using a flat fee model as most criminal defense firms do, as of late 2025:
Initial/Investigative Stage: Market range of $4,500 to $8,000. Our usual fee: $6,500.
Preliminary Hearing Stage: Market range of $8,000 to $20,000. Our usual fee is between $10,000 and $12,000.
Trial Stage: Market range of $15,000 to more than $100,000. Our usual fee is $25,000.
Administrative hearing: Market range of $10,000 to $50,000. Our usual fee is $15,000 to $20,000.
Travel costs for pretrial hearings, preliminary hearings, trials, and administrative boards are highly variable and billed separately, but they aren’t speculative. They will be discussed in any standard fee agreement.
One More Trick to Be Alert For
Ask the attorney how trial fees are calculated. Some firms will quote a trial fee, but then cap the number of on-site days that are included. If a trial runs long, you’ll be paying many thousands of dollars more than you budgeted for. Also check if the firm charges separately for travel days. Last, make sure the attorney isn’t limiting the hours of what constitutes a “day.” Some firms will charge an hourly rate for all time spent past 8 hours working on a trial day.
Our trial fee covers all work, all time on-site, all travel time. Set in advance. If the trial runs longer than expected, we don’t hit you with additional charges for our time or work, only the additional costs incurred (hotel, etc.).
Now You Have the Knowledge They Don’t Want You to Have
Talk to lawyers who don’t wall you off with third party apps and call centers and won’t bullshit you about money. Call 800-319-3134 for a private consultation.