Picked the flat fee over the hourly rate for a contract job and it backfired big time

So last month I had a small legal review gig for a friend's rental lease agreement. I was torn between charging a flat $200 or billing hourly at $50 an hour. I went with the flat fee thinking it'd be a quick one hour job, but then they kept sending revisions and asking about weird clauses like pet deposits and subletting rules. After three rounds of changes and about 5 hours total, I basically made $40 an hour instead of my usual rate. The worst part was they wanted me to review a whole separate addendum for a roommate situation that wasn't even in the original scope. I should have stuck with hourly because now I'm kicking myself over that $150 I left on the table. Has anyone else regretted choosing flat fee over hourly for a simple job that turned complicated?

3 comments

3 Comments

rivera.hannah14d ago

I saw an article about this exact thing on a lawyer forum a while back, where someone said flat fees are only good if you know the job inside and out. Like with leases, the clauses can open up a whole can of worms once they start asking about specific stuff. The pet deposit thing alone could lead to a whole separate city ordinance check, and the subletting rules might be tied to state law which takes forever to look up. What really gets me is the addendum situation, that roommate agreement should have been a separate flat fee or hourly from the start. It makes me wonder if putting clear boundaries in the original quote would have helped, like listing exactly what the flat fee covers.

paulnguyen14d ago

Yeah that's basically how I do it now (learned the hard way).

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taylor_wells14d ago

Wait wait wait, they tacked on a whole roommate addendum and expected it to be covered under the original flat fee? That is absolutely wild to me. I can't believe you didn't just say "hey that's a separate project" right then and there. The pet deposit and subletting stuff is annoying enough but adding an entire new document is a whole different level of taking advantage. You basically gave them a free extra hour of work on top of all the revisions. I would have been so frustrated I might have just stopped responding for a day.