Real Estate work

[Denyse Giguere]

I am hoping that my fellow Virtual Paralegals can help me....

I have been working for a real estate lawyer here in Calgary the last few months, and until recently he was paying me per hour. Now that he is branching out into his own office (he used to work with a bigger firm, now he's out on his own), he wants me to do everything (I used to just do the preparation of documents. Now I will be doing everything from file opening to closing) and he wants me to charge a per file fee, instead of a per hour fee.

Have any of you guys done work for a real estate lawyer, and if you have, what do you think would be a reasonable per file fee? The per hour fee I was charging was $30.00/hour.

Thanks in advance for any advice

Denyse Giguere

[The10HourVA]

Denyse - I am guessing that we can't post pricing info in the forum...but you are welcome to contact me offlist. (via contact form on www.eRealtyAssistance.com) In the US, we have Transaction Coordinators for real estate file management, they get paid so much per each side of the transaction...and another amount if they are coordinating both sides of the transaction. I assume they have such things in Canada too? I think basically, the consensus for what I am talking about is that it takes approx. 10 hrs. per transaction per side...so perhaps you could use a similar guideline to figure out where your per file fee needs to be at? Good luck!