A news story today that Bill Cosby still owes $2.75 million in legal fees. We have no idea how much he paid over time, but there is no question that Bill Cosby was not a poor man going into his criminal case, I would expect that the unpaid balance is less than half of what the representation ultimately cost.

What strikes me is the disparity in resources people can put into different legal cases. I do a lot of consumer and business debt defense cases.  My fees for a standard business case range from $2,500 to $5000, because that’s all the businesses can afford. For consumer cases, my fees are sometimes lower – when I can afford to do those cases.  That’s on the order of 1/1000 what Bill Cosby put into his criminal defense case — or to put it another way, for every 1 hour I can put into a case, Bill Cosby’s lawyers put in a half year’s worth of work – and he still lost. 

What I have learned is to make a defense case useful and worthwhile on a budget, you have to carefully plan your strategy. You must have well-defined goals and objectives, and a pathway to get there.