The learning path: read your own bill with general knowledge behind you.

Four short modules teach how attorney billing generally works, what people in the field commonly scrutinize, how a self-advocacy letter is generally structured, and what can generally happen afterward. The lessons are general education. You bring the judgment about your own situation.

What this path is, plainly

This is a self-help education program. The modules below teach general information about how legal fees and invoices are commonly structured and what kinds of questions people in the field commonly ask about a bill. They do not look at your bill, they do not tell you whether anything was wrong, and they do not predict any result. You read the general material, you organize your own facts in your own words, and you decide for yourself what, if anything, to do.

The assistant on this site is an automated AI program, not a lawyer and not a person. It will say so if you ask. It explains general information and helps you organize your own notes. It never evaluates your specific bill and it never contacts anyone for you.

Equip, not conclude. That is the design.

This program is built to equip you with general knowledge and to organize your own words. It is built so it will never tell you that you have, likely have, or may have a claim, never characterize your specific bill, and never write your letter. That boundary is a deliberate feature. The general material is here so you can study it; the judgment about your own facts stays with you, on purpose, because it is yours to make.

The four modules, in order

Work through them in sequence. Each one builds on the last, and each ends with a link to the next.

Module 1 Billing 101: how attorney fees generally work

Hourly, flat, contingency, and retainer arrangements in general terms. What a trust or retainer account generally is, what an itemized invoice generally contains, what task-based time entries generally look like, what the general industry term "block billing" generally means, and how costs and disbursements generally differ from fees.

Start Module 1 → Module 2 What makes a bill questionable, in general

The general categories people in the field commonly scrutinize, taught as concepts to understand rather than a checklist that decides anything for you: vagueness and missing task descriptions, large round-number blocks, time math that does not reconcile, charges with no description, and billing increments. How to read a bill and form your own view.

Go to Module 2 → Module 3 The demand-letter framework

The general anatomy of a self-advocacy letter a person might write themselves: identifying yourself and the engagement, stating what you paid, stating factually what you observed in your own records, stating what you are asking for, setting a reasonable deadline, and keeping the tone businesslike. You write every word yourself.

Go to Module 3 → Module 4 What happens next, and New York fee arbitration

In general terms, the kinds of things that can happen after a person sends a self-advocacy letter, stated as general possibilities and not predictions. Then a plain, general explainer of New York's client-elected attorney-client fee dispute resolution program under 22 NYCRR Part 137, which New York consumers can look up themselves.

Go to Module 4 →

Reference resources

Two general references you can read like pages in a book. They explain how billing generally works and show general example situations. Neither one looks at your bill or tells you what anything means for you. Any connection to your own situation is yours to draw, privately.

Reference Plain-language glossary

The general billing ideas explained the way you would explain them to a friend, each paired with an everyday example (a phone bill, a mechanic, a contractor). General knowledge about how the field works, not about your bill.

Open the glossary → Reference Analogous situations

General made-up example situations, written so you can read them and decide for yourself, privately, whether anything resembles your own experience. The page never asks about your situation and never tells you an example is yours.

Open the situations →

Get the program for $149

One flat fee. You get all of the lessons, your private workspace to organize your own bill and notes, a worked example, and the general letter-writing framework you use to write your own words. No case intake, nothing reviewed for you, no card kept on file.

These lessons are general education, not legal advice. Legal Fee Recovery is not a law firm and is not a lawyer, and the assistant on this site is an automated AI, not a lawyer. The material does not evaluate your specific bill and it does not tell you whether you have a claim. You make every decision about your own situation and you write and send any letter yourself, in your own words.