FEE MODELS

Basically, lawyers are entitled to invoice according to the Lawyer's Tariff Law (“Rechtsanwalts-tarifgesetz, RATG”), to the autonomous fee guidelines (“autonome Honorarrichtlinien, AHK”) for lawyers, to flat-rate fees agreed upon in individual cases or hourly rates . Each of these systems bears its advantages yet disadvantages. An invoicing according to RATG is directly based on laws, the one according to AHK on a guideline issued by the Bar Association. However, these two ways of settlement are problematic on the one hand due to a frequent inappropriateness of the actual performed work (since a fixed basis for assessment is used), and on the other hand because they are based on rather complex formulas, making the result of the invoicing often hard to understand .