How Many Work Hours are Involved in a Domestic Assault Case?

Well, you are going to be surprised at the answer. There’s a lot of work involved in any criminal case. I’m focused on domestic. I find the average number of hours that our firm works on a domestic assault from start to finish including all the work that we do including trial prep is probably about 40 to 50 hours. Sometimes a little longer than that. I don’t think I’ve seen fewer than 40 hours on any file but there’s a lot of work involved in a domestic assault just like any criminal case. There’s initial court appearances, there’s meetings with the crown, meetings with the client, meeting with the judge, trial preparations take many many hours as well. Just preparing your client to testify alone which they usually do in a domestic assault, I find at our office we take at least 5 hours to do that. Some clients take longer depending on the intellect and whether the client is getting it properly and coming across well to the office because we do mock cross examinations, mock examinations in-chief so they know what’s going to be going on.

So, from start to finish I would say a reasonable estimate 40 to 50 hours of legal work sometimes more. Again, as I state in another video, criminal lawyers I wish I could just start talking off the cuff at court. It doesn’t work that way. Winning a domestic assault case is detailed preparation. The devil is in the details and it takes many many hours to complete.

So that’s the short answer to that question about how many hours of legal work are involved in a domestic assault case.