How Much does it Cost for Brotman Law to Defend Me in My Criminal Tax matter? So it's a complex question with a complex answer but let me get to the straight point criminal investigations are usually matters that take a long time to resolve the government is taking their time in building an investigation there's usually a lot of complicated circumstances around the facts there may be multiple witnesses there may be multiple years where conduct as a lavish.

We may have unfiled tax returns we may have fraudulently filed tax returns or at the very least tax returns that are not correct so when looking at cost you have to consider the fact that this is over a generally an extended period of time and with that said there's a lot of work that goes into these cases some of the work happens at the beginning in order to mitigate the damages some of it involves preparing for a special agent interview preparing for a proffer session with the US attorney we're preparing for a number of different things that get submitted during the course of these investigations and so a variety of things go into that generally paralegal time on our criminal matters so the staff that have the lower billing rates largely go away now we can leverage our our lower billing rate staff to help offset the cost in terms of organizing documents and preparing them for submissions and things like that but when it comes to a criminal mentor you want the best and the brightest in the firm handling the matter and so that's usually me and in some combination with my senior team in order to help so our billing rates for seniors return as senior attorneys are anywhere between 350 and 525 an hour so I want you to take that into perspective there's a lot of it's that's driven by documents there's a lot of it that's driven by the Condor the agent and there's a lot that's driven by the fact and so it's very hard to give an estimate with that said when we take a criminal matter on we're usually looking at about a $25,000 and that obviously varies if it's a witness investigation we're not going to need anywhere near that much of a retainers that are a hundred thousand case if it's a larger and more complex criminal matter I mean we've taken retainers that are a hundred thousand dollars and or more in Criminal Investigations so it just kind of depends when we quote a retainer we're looking at the volume of work that's involved and we're looking to try and distribute that as most efficiently as possible,
So there's a lot of moving pieces that go into this so a lot of the times what happens with a criminal investigation particularly on the tax side is it doesn't make sense for us to do the math or the bookkeeping or things like that so we'll bring in a bookkeeper we'll bring in a CPA under what we call Covell agreement which protects them under the in the envelope of our attorney-client privilege and we use that to offset costs but I just want to give you an idea is from when we work on a criminal manner we're looking at this from a marathon-- perspective and not a sprint,
so there's a lot of care that's taken at my level and among our senior attorneys to really mitigate resources and to protect things because we want to make sure we're giving the best representation possible we take our job as counsel very seriously we don't want to be a financial burden on anybody but we want to make sure that the work gets done because it's in the clients best interest to do the work and to do it right and so there's an investment on that it's a significant investment and that investment usually spans over multiple multiple months in but that's the best guideposts I can give you for how much a matter generally costs in the firm from a criminal set of things now if you want to for specificity with a little bit more facts about the situation you're facing with an understanding of the parties that are involved the tax returns that are involved at the documents that are involved I can give you a much more much more pigeon-holed kind of quote on that by understanding a little bit more we've had a variety of criminal matters in the over the years we've had some that are not quite as costly we've had some that are very costly and we've been most of them that are in the middle which is "why I feel pretty confident in giving you that range" but if I know more facts I can definitely give you a better guideline of where you stand and then how much your matter is going to cost and in helping you plan that out to make sure that you're utilizing the resources most effectively and I think that's ultimately best for any criminal tax matter and its best for you the client.