How we research legal costs
Three rules
- Official numbers first. Court filing fees, statutory caps and agency fees come from the statute, court rule or official fee schedule, linked at the claim.
- Market prices only from named sources. Lawyer rates come from published data such as Clio's Legal Trends data (national average $349/hour, 2025) or from a named provider's published price list, with the date we checked it.
- No invented precision. If a figure varies by county or we could not verify it, the page says so. Where no reliable market range exists, we show an illustrative calculation with its arithmetic, labeled as an example.
What we do not publish
- Settlement or case-value predictions. Earlier versions of our injury and mesothelioma calculators produced dollar estimates from a few inputs; we removed them because no public data supports them.
- State "average rates" made by multiplying a national number. Our state pages show a state rate only where Clio publishes one.
- Claims of legal review. No lawyer reviews this site, and we do not imply otherwise.
How the state data is checked
For each state we check the small claims limit and filing fee, the general civil and divorce filing fees, the personal injury statute of limitations, any statutory caps on attorney fees, the state bar's fee-dispute and referral programs, and legal aid. Each item records the official URL it came from and the date checked; the state pages show those links next to the figures. The current full review was completed on October 11, 2026.
Keeping pages current
Fees change by statute, court order and inflation adjustments. Each page shows the date it was last reviewed. Pages about ongoing litigation (for example Roundup, talc and Camp Lejeune) carry dated status notes and are re-checked when there is news. Readers can report outdated information through the contact page.