The German Act on Lawyer Fees

The German Act on Lawyer Fees - RVG - regulates the fees that lawyers may charge for legal activities, if no other fee structure has been agreed upon. An authentic version in German can be found on the GermanMinistry of Justice's website or when following this link.

The Act introduced a system of tariffs, "Gebühren". The height of tariffs depends on the value of the claim, the "Streitwert". The law then states how many tariffs a lawyer may charge for a certain activity. An entire legal procedure during one instance usually consists of four tariffs.

A hypothetical construction: Assuming that the value of a claim were 4000,00 €, a calculation according to the RVG would result in one tariff having a value of 265,00 €. An entire process before one court instance would therefor be equal to four times the value of one tariff (265,00 €), which is 1060,00 €. This would be the lawyer´s honorarium in the hypothetical case under consideration.

A Mahnverfahren, the German Payment Order, is not a full fledged process, however. According to the RVG a lawyer may charge a .5 tariff for the submission of a Payment Order and a .3 tariff for the submission of an Enforcement Order.

We have created a calculator applying the system of tariffs for a Mahnverfahren in our Costs German Payment Order section. It is merely meant to provide you with an impression and excludes the costs for our first-assessment.

The first assessment is an advisory service. Such services are not regulated in the RVG, for which reason it is common to agree on other modes of billing, such as a time rate or fixed service fee.

Please don't hesitate to contact us for more information.

Although courts make use of tariffs to derive at their court costs as well, they do not follow the rule of the RVG.

Last but not least it should never be forgotten that the losing party has to cover the other party's legal expenses, such as lawyer and court fees. Your debtor therefor has to cover your legal costs, if your claim is enforceable.