Full Disclosure
The importance of knowing what you are getting.
About a year ago, I was at the Immigration Department and there was this American man who could be in his early sixties, struggling with his broken Spanish, trying to get some answers from the clerks who do not speak any English. I approached the man to see if I could help. He told me that he was not paying the security deposit and the fees for the ID card. His lawyer never told him of these expenses and he is not willing to pay a dime more, he had already spent thousands of dollars and will not spend any more money in the residency process.
This new client told us recently that our prices were more than double than other firms. We are confronted by this situation on a regular basis. It happens probably twice a week. People who present us with this situation hire our services about half of the time. Pricing is a challenge not only for our business, but for every business out there.
For us, the challenge is not whether to set competitive pricing to compete with other business, but whether to provide accurate pricing. And thus, the issue is not whether our prices are high, but rather the competition is providing accurate pricing.
We aim to manage what we can control, and certainly we can control our pricing, but not the pricing or quoting by the competition. When we provide a quote, our goal is for the client to know exactly what amount of money they will spend on any given project, whether it is immigration, real estate or business. Naturally, we do not like to spend more money than expected. We try to manage our client’s expectations by providing accurate quotes.
The point of the story today is for people to request accurate quotes when shopping around, not only for legal services but for any services they will need in Costa Rica. It is very common for people to go overbudget when doing a construction, being overcharged can happen in any industry. So, the question is: do you prefer to know upfront how much do you need to spend on a given project, or do you prefer to be killed by papercuts?
When it comes to legal services, the Costa Rican Bar Association sets a price schedule for all legal services. These prices are minimums, which must be abided. I already got into trouble for billing too little when marrying over 140 couples in Atenas, Lake Arenal and Playas del Coco to solve the issue for the marriage certificates for CAJA. The board of notary publics (DNN) did not like that and suspended me. No, regrets, I am proud of it, and it is worth it. The purpose of those group weddings was not for me to become rich by stealing clients from other attorneys, but to provide a practical solution to a silly requirement.
Anyhow, while the Bar Association sets the minimum prices for legal and notarial services, it also requires full disclosure of all the costs involved in order to avoid any surprises to the clients. Section 48 of the Code of Ethical Obligations for attorneys in Costa Rica requires the attorney (or notary public) to agree with the client on the legal fees and expenses related to the legal matter.
This one time, this client told us that “the other firm” charged him $900 USD for the residency process under the retired person category. It does not sound right when the government fees are at least $673 USD. The problem for this person is that while they initially telling him that the cost is $900 USD, at the end that person will end up expending at least twice as much money.
My goal here is for people to demand an accurate description of the fees and costs and to put them in a written contract with the service provider, and to refer to contract if there are any issues later on when it comes to expenses. Putting the costs down in a contract will avoid any issues in the future. I do not recall ever having any issues with clients telling me that we are overcharging compared to terms of the service agreement.
I suggest for other people to do the same. Have the terms in writing, it will help you down the road. When it comes to immigration, you can review the government fees related to this process by clicking here.