Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the Quote Request form.
About Our Quoting Process
Because the nature of our business is such that we cannot adequately describe the complex array of legal questions and problems that we may be asked to research, we cannot provide a quote without considering the specifics of the actual problem at hand. Accordingly, we ask that you provide us with as much information relating to your legal problem as possible.
Once we have reviewed your request, we will contact you with a preliminary quote that outlines what we expect your project to cost, sets forth what we deem to be the parameters of your problem, and provides you with a specific set of questions that we think directly addresses your legal research needs. After providing you with a preliminary quote, we will schedule a teleconference at your convenience to review your preliminary quote and make adjustments to the quote as needed. Following our teleconference we will finalize our quote and email it to you. Once you have signed the finalized quote (either physically or digitally) and returned it to us, we will place your project in our work queue to be completed by the agreed upon due date.
Any time spent on preliminary research used to prepare your quote as well as the time spent in the teleconference is free of charge.
Billing Rate and Fees
Southeastern bills out our research services on an hourly basis, and we will always provide you with an upfront quote that we will not exceed unless you request an alteration to the parameters of the research request once you have accepted our quote. Our current billing rate is $75 per hour, and--unlike some of other legal research firms--we will never assess an hourly surcharge to offset the cost of our access to online databases to facilitate our research.
We provide electronic delivery of all completed memorandum and available research material at no charge to our client. We will deliver physical copies of completed memorandum and available research materal at the cost of $0.25 per page of printed material and the actual cost of shipping through your preferred carrier. Please note that if you request physical delivery, then your quote is subject to change depending upon the number of pages to be printed out as well as the actual shipping cost.
Rush Assignments
The only variation upward in our billing rate will be for those clients who request a rush assignment. A rush assignments is an assignment that demands a significant amount of a researcher's time in order to meet its pressing deadline. Because accomodating rush assignments requires that we juggle projects for other clients around, rush assignments are billed at a premium.
Contract Pricing
Contract pricing at a significant discount is available to law firms interested in making a long-term commitment to Southeastern. If you are interested in discussing contract pricing, please fill out the form on the Contact Us page, and select "Contract Pricing" from the drop down box.
Pro Bono Work
Southeastern is committed to meeting its ethical obligation to provide pro bono legal services to those who would otherwise be unable to afford it. To that extent we are pleased to offer legal research assistance to those attorneys who are currently providing pro bono representation to individuals of limited financial means. If you are an attorney and your current legal research needs involve a client whom you are assisting pro bono, then please indicate so on your quote request.
Notice: Due to ethical considerations we regret that we are unable to offer our services to non-attorneys.