Know What Things Cost

Legal research is only one piece of the larger part of answering a clients legal problem.  With  the growing trend of fixed fee pricing, alternative fee arrangements, and other pre-arranged cost structures for legal work, it is more important than ever for a researcher to know several things that don’t relate to the problem their research is attempting to answer:

1. Is there a fee arrangement that applies to the file being worked on
2. Will he client accept research disbursements
3. Is there a legal project budget that the research costs should fit into
4. Will recorded time  for the researcher be billed

Just as lawyers should talk to their clients about the budget before legal work, so to should researchers speak to their stakeholders.