Handed a flat fee quote for a DUI defense? Read these four lines first

A quoted number for a first impaired driving charge in Washington usually arrives as a single figure in an email, sometimes with a sentence or two of description and sometimes with nothing at all. The figure is real, but it describes a defined stretch of work rather than the whole matter, and the boundary between what is inside and what is outside sits in the fee agreement rather than in the conversation that preceded it. A careful reader treats the quote as a scope document first and a price second. The price is easy to compare. The scope is where two quotes that look identical turn out not to be.

What the number usually buys

In most flat fee agreements for a first offense, the covered work runs from the initial appearance or arraignment through the pretrial phase: entering a plea, obtaining and reviewing discovery, filing routine motions, appearing at pretrial hearings that in many Washington district and municipal courts get continued more than once, and negotiating with the city or county prosecutor. That is genuinely the bulk of the work in the bulk of cases, because most matters resolve there. It also includes the unglamorous parts, meaning phone calls with the prosecutor, calendar management, and the appearances the client is sometimes excused from attending. Read the agreement for how it defines the end of that stretch.

Where the line typically falls

Four categories sit outside a standard flat fee often enough that their absence should be assumed rather than inferred. Trial is the first, usually quoted separately and sometimes at a figure comparable to the base fee, because a jury trial in a court of limited jurisdiction consumes days of preparation. The administrative license hearing is the second, a Department of Licensing proceeding on its own timeline with its own record. The third is expert or technical review, including a defense expert's examination of the breath test instrument's maintenance and calibration records, thermometer certifications, and quality assurance procedures. Appeals are the fourth.

None of that means the exclusions are unreasonable. An attorney who folded a contested trial and a licensing hearing and an expert's retainer into one number for every client would be charging the eighty percent who resolve early for work they will never need. Separating the phases is the honest structure. What matters is that the separation is written down, with the second-phase figure stated or at least described, so that the decision to go to trial later is a decision about the case rather than a surprise about money.

Flat fee, retainer, and hourly compared

A true flat fee is earned according to the terms of the agreement and does not draw down against recorded time; the client's exposure is capped for the defined scope and uncapped for everything outside it. A retainer is a deposit against hourly billing, held in trust and billed against at a stated rate, with the unearned balance refundable and the possibility of a request to replenish if the case runs long. Hourly billing without a deposit is less common in this practice area. Payment plans are a separate variable entirely, describing when money is paid rather than what it buys, and they attach to any of the three structures.

Two quotes at the same headline number can behave very differently under these structures. The flat fee is predictable within its scope and silent beyond it. The retainer is transparent about what is being done and unpredictable about the total. Where a firm offers a payment plan, the practical questions are whether representation continues if a payment is late, whether the balance accelerates before a trial date, and whether the plan carries a fee of its own.

The questions that expose the gap

Ask what happens to the fee if the case is set for trial, and whether the answer is a credit, a new figure, or a rate. Ask whether the license hearing is included, and if not, what it costs and who requests it. Ask who pays an expert and whether the office has used one on comparable facts. Ask what a continuance past a stated number of pretrial hearings does to the agreement. Ask what is refundable and when. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration sets the standards behind much of the field sobriety and testing framework these cases turn on, and reviewing that evidence properly is skilled work that a written scope should account for openly.

The version of this conversation worth having happens before signature, when both sides can still write a sentence into the agreement. Most attorneys will answer these questions directly, and the ones who put the answers in writing have given the reader something to hold.