The number quoted over the phone and the number written in the fee agreement are rarely describing the same amount of work, and the difference lives in three or four clauses most people skim. A flat quote for a first-offense Washington DUI usually contemplates arraignment, discovery review, negotiation with the city or county prosecutor, and a resolution short of a jury. A retainer against an hourly rate contemplates whatever happens, billed as it happens. Both can be fair. Neither tells you what you will actually spend until you read what the document excludes, and exclusions are where the money is.
Flat fee and hourly retainer, priced for different risks
A flat fee moves the risk of a long case onto the lawyer, which is why the number looks large next to an hourly rate that starts small. If the case settles at the second pretrial hearing, the flat fee buyer overpaid slightly and the hourly client did well. If suppression motions run through three hearings and a contested evidentiary record, the arithmetic reverses fast. An hourly retainer is a deposit, not a price, and the agreement should say plainly whether unused funds sit in a trust account and come back to you, or whether the firm treats them as earned on receipt. Washington's professional conduct rules distinguish those two treatments, and the paperwork has to pick one.
The careful reader checks the billing increment as well. Six minutes and fifteen minutes are both common, and over a case with dozens of short calls, emails, and continuances, the increment quietly changes the total by a meaningful margin. Ask which tasks are billed at the attorney rate and which at a paralegal or investigator rate, and whether travel to a district court in another county bills as time. None of this is unusual or improper. It is simply information that costs nothing to obtain before signing and cannot be renegotiated afterward.
Where trial sits in the number
This is the single clause worth reading twice. Many flat fee agreements cover the case up to but not including trial, then set a separate trial fee, sometimes a second flat amount, sometimes a daily rate. That structure is defensible, because a jury trial is a distinct project with jury selection, motions in limine, witness subpoenas, and days of courtroom time. What is not workable is discovering the second number in month four, when the prosecutor's offer is a straight DUI plea and your leverage depends on being genuinely willing to try the case. Ask for the trial figure in writing at signing, along with what triggers it: a trial setting, a readiness hearing, or the first day of testimony.
Costs that pass through, and the hearing on the other track
Fees pay the lawyer. Costs pay everyone else, and the agreement should list which side of that line each item falls on. An independent blood retest at a private laboratory, a forensic toxicologist to review a breath instrument's calibration and quality assurance records, an accident reconstructionist, an interpreter, a private investigator to locate a witness from a parking lot: each is billed at what the vendor charges, usually paid in advance, usually not inside a flat fee. Breath and field sobriety protocols trace back to standards the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is responsible for, and a defense expert reviewing whether those protocols were followed is retained separately from your attorney.
Then there is the Department of Licensing hearing, which is an administrative proceeding on its own schedule with its own deadline and its own filing fee. Some firms include representation at that hearing in the criminal case fee; many price it as a separate engagement, and a few decline it entirely. The agreement should name which. Since the license consequence often matters more to a working driver than the criminal fine, knowing before you pay whether the hearing is inside or outside the number is not a detail. It is half the value of the representation.
Check public defender eligibility first, not second
Every Washington court that hears a DUI has a process for screening indigency, and the screening is based on income, household size, and assets rather than on whether you feel you can afford a lawyer. It costs nothing to complete the financial declaration and ask, and the answer arrives quickly. If you qualify, appointed counsel handles the criminal case at public expense, and courts can authorize expert funds on motion. If you do not qualify, you have lost nothing and gained a firm baseline for reading the private quotes in front of you.
Take the agreement home. A firm that expects informed clients will send the draft by email, answer the trial question with a figure, and put the licensing hearing in its own paragraph.