Attorney FAQs

Court Buddy is an online platform that matches clients with attorneys based on the clients' legal needs, the attorneys' expertise and experience, and clients' and attorneys' location. We help attorneys find clients, build and manage client relationships, be that for one legal service or an entire case, improve client communication regarding services and budgets, and we handle billing and facilitate payments for attorneys.

Court Buddy matches you to paying clients based on location, area of legal specialty, and services requested. All clients pay an upfront, flat fee for their legal service, which we securely hold in the CB Direct Pay® system. This way, we can ensure that payments will be made to you once the work is completed. Once connected, attorneys and clients can securely communicate through the Court Buddy message board or the CourtBuddy Chat® app. Once the work is complete, the client releases payment directly to you through our CB Direct Pay® system. Our goal is to provide our attorneys with the tools and technology they need to easily build and manage client relationships, improve attorney-client communication regarding services and budgets, and to handle billing and facilitate payments for our attorney members.

Primarily individuals, families and small business owners: clients who will pay for legal services, but who need to know in advance what the cost will be. These are not pro bono clients, but clients who need legal services to be more affordable, transparent and predictable than the law firm retainer and hourly billing structure allow.

We find that solo and small firm attorneys are best suited to Court Buddy, because they traditionally work with individuals, families and small business owners as clients, and because they have the flexibility to work with clients utilizing alternative fee models such as fixed rates.

Tell us about your practice: answer some questions that will determine what types of cases you will receive. By selecting the state(s) and counties you want to practice in, we will be able to match you with clients best suited to you. Submit your license number and state bar information: you will be prompted to enter your state bar number and related information. Our onboarding team will then confirm your status as a member of the bar in good standing and with no disciplinary history. Begin accepting cases: you will be alerted via email/push notification when a new case has arrived for you. Make sure to download the CourtBuddy Chat® app to receive notifications instantly!

At the moment, Court Buddy is asking attorneys to sign up to offer those services that are the most frequently requested by clients.  We have an Attorney Success team who can help you craft your profile and optimize your possible matches. Please feel free to call us toll-free at 1-866-653-3017.

You will be alerted via email/push notification when a new client is available to you. We send you a description of the case and service needed, as well as a questionnaire that the client has completed, so that you are alerted to any pending deadlines and can assess whether you are able and willing to take on the work. If you accept, you will be immediately connected to your new client. Otherwise, we need you to decline, so that we can match the client to another Court Buddy attorney member.

That is not a problem. If after speaking with the client you decide you cannot continue with the case, we ask you to treat the consultation as complimentary and then contact our Attorney Success Team at 415-653-3098. We will work on matching the client with another attorney member who is better able to help them. We will continue to send you service requests when our algorithm finds you new potential clients.

Court Buddy collects payments upfront from clients and securely holds the funds in the CB Direct Pay™ system. This enables us to ensure that payments will be available to you once the work has been done.  Once you have completed a service for a client, you request payment through the CB Direct Pay™ system.  The funds are released to you upon the clients confirming your request. Court Buddy's CB Direct Pay™ system utilizes Stripe, Inc. to ensure secure payment processing.

You receive all of your set legal fees for the work you do for clients. Court Buddy makes its money by charging clients an additional, per-transaction service fee (currently, the Court Buddy service fee ranges between 15-20%).

We require our attorneys to offer their services to Court Buddy clients at set, fixed rates.  We have set those rates in keeping with our market research and what clients have traditionally been willing to pay for legal services on Court Buddy.  The current rates are as follows. For a legal consultation/the first civil or criminal defense service: $210 in legal fees. For the majority of additional civil and criminal defense legal services: $340 in legal fees.  For a legal consultation/the first business or personal financial legal service: $335 in legal fees. For the majority of additional business or personal financial legal services: $420. A limited number of complex services have been set at higher price-points, $685 and $1,130 for civil and criminal services, and $899 and $1,499 for business or personal financial services.  You are paid directly through the secure CB Direct Pay™ system.

We ask you to work within Court Buddy's set rates for each type of legal service we offer because one of the primary consumer issues our platform is solving for is the need for transparency and predictability when purchasing legal services. Our market research and data shows that families, individuals and small business owners will pay for legal services, they need to know in advance what the services will cost so that they can budget accordingly. That said, we expect our standard legal fees ($340 per service for most civil and criminal services/$420 per service for most business and personal financial services) to work in most, but not all, instances. So, yes, the legal fees are different for different services. We have priced certain more complicated tasks, such as, for example, case dispositive briefing, trial appearances or appellate work, at higher prices, which our attorney members can charge as appropriate. We are currently developing overall case budget calculators, coming later in 2020, to further assist attorneys in educating their clients and help them plan for ongoing work. You may contact our Attorney Success team toll-free at (866) 653-3017 for more information and to discuss the fee schedules we have developed per practice area.

We understand that once you have your legal consultation with your client, or after you have started working for them, there is often more work to be done on a case. If the client agrees to engage you for additional work, please handle that through the platform, just as you did before. You are able to select additional legal services for your clients to fund through the CB Direct Pay™ system, at set rates. Court Buddy is also developing a budget calculator for each type of case we commonly see on our platform, coming later in 2020, to assist you in explaining and creating an overall case budget for your clients.

You may do so at your discretion, and it is always a good idea to formalize a representation in writing with a client, to protect yourself and define the scope of the engagement. Court Buddy has a sample limited scope engagement agreement that our attorney members can use as a template if desired. We encourage attorneys to comply with their state’s ethics rules: some states require formal engagement agreements, others only require a client's acknowledgment in some form. If you do have a client sign an engagement agreement, you may upload it to that client's account on Court Buddy using the message board or the CourtBuddy Chat® app.

We're here to answer your questions and help! We are also here to help you refine your profile and give you the best chance at serving many new clients in your area of specialty. Please feel free to use the "chat" feature on our site or call our Attorney Success Team toll-free at 1-866-653-3017.