One of the most common reasons people don’t fight a debt collection lawsuit is the assumption that hiring an attorney will cost more than the debt itself. It is a reasonable concern. Legal fees have a reputation for being unpredictable, open ended, and impossible to budget for. If you are already being sued for a few thousand dollars, the last thing you want is to add an attorney bill on top of it.
That assumption is worth examining closely, because it is almost always wrong when it comes to debt defense. The math is different here, and understanding how flat fee representation works changes the picture entirely.
This post explains what a flat fee actually covers, how it compares to the alternative, and why in the vast majority of cases, hiring a debt defense attorney costs far less than doing nothing.
What Is a Flat Fee and How Does It Work?
A flat fee is a single fixed amount that covers all the legal work on your case regardless of how long it takes or how many court appearances are required. You are not billed by the hour. You do not receive invoices for phone calls, letters, motions filed, or individual court dates. You pay one amount, and that covers everything from the day we enter the case to the day it resolves.
This matters because collection cases in Missouri do not resolve quickly. Most go through several monthly court appearances before anything is decided. Each of those appearances is handled by your attorney on your behalf. Under a flat fee structure, none of those individual appearances costs you anything extra. Under an hourly billing structure, every single one would.
The Two Options at Boevingloh & Pliakos
At Boevingloh & Pliakos, the flat fee for a consumer debt defense case is $200 per month for three months, or a discounted fee of $550 paid upfront. That is the full cost of representation, from entry of appearance through resolution. Payment plans are available if you need them.
The upfront option saves $50 and is the right choice if you are in a position to pay at the start. The monthly option breaks the fee into three payments of $200 each, which makes it accessible even when money is tight. Either way, the scope of representation is identical.
One important note about payment plans. The payment schedule is not tied to the length of your case. If your case resolves in six weeks, the remaining balance on the plan is still owed. That is because the outcome reflects the work done, not just the time spent. A case that resolves quickly usually does so because of strong early work, not because it was simple.
What Does the Flat Fee Actually Cover?
Everything. There is no list of services that are included and another list that will cost extra. The flat fee covers the full scope of defending a collection case in Missouri, which typically includes the following.
Entry of Appearance
Once you hire us, we file an entry of appearance with the court immediately. This notifies the court and the opposing attorney that you have representation. All communication goes through us from that point forward. The sheriff stops showing up. The opposing attorney stops contacting you directly.
Answer and Affirmative Defenses
We file an answer to the petition and raise affirmative defenses, which are legal arguments for why the plaintiff should not win the case. These might include the statute of limitations, lack of standing to sue, or failure to prove ownership of the debt. Getting the answer right from the start shapes the entire direction of the case.
All Court Appearances
Missouri collection cases go through monthly call docket appearances before they resolve. We handle every one of those on your behalf. In most situations you never need to set foot in a courtroom. We appear, we report back, and the case moves forward. That is included in the flat fee regardless of how many months the case takes.
Discovery
We send formal discovery requests to the opposing attorneys asking them to produce the documentation needed to prove their claim. This includes the original account agreement, the full account history, and proof of the chain of ownership from the original creditor to the current plaintiff. Debt buyers often cannot produce all of this, and that weakness becomes the leverage that leads to dismissal.
Motions and Communications
Any motions filed throughout the case, written communications with opposing counsel, and legal work connected to moving the case toward resolution are all covered. There is no separate billing for any of it.
FDCPA Evaluation
Every case is also evaluated for potential violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. If the debt collector or their attorneys violated your rights in the process of pursuing this case, those FDCPA claims can be raised as counterclaims within the same proceeding at no additional cost.
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The Real Cost Comparison: Flat Fee vs. Doing Nothing
The question most people are actually asking is not what does an attorney cost. It is what does fighting this lawsuit cost compared to not fighting it. Here is an honest comparison.
If You Do Nothing
If you ignore the lawsuit, the court enters a default judgment against you. At that point the debt collector can garnish up to 25 percent of your disposable wages, levy your bank accounts, and place liens on real property you own. The judgment accrues interest at a minimum of 9 percent per year and can be renewed every ten years indefinitely. On a $5,000 judgment, that is $450 in interest in the first year alone, growing every year until it is paid.
The collection attorney can also require you to appear in court for a debtor’s exam where you must disclose your finances under oath. If you do not show up, the judge can issue a warrant for your arrest. Even if you never miss a single payment on the judgment, you will pay the full amount plus years of accrued interest.
If You Fight Back
The flat fee at Boevingloh & Pliakos is $550 paid upfront or $200 per month for three months. In many cases the lawsuit gets dismissed entirely and the client pays nothing to the debt buyer. In first-party cases involving creditors like Chase or Capital One, we almost always negotiate a no-interest payment plan for a fraction of the original balance, meaning every dollar paid goes toward the actual debt rather than interest.
Even in the least favorable scenario where the case results in a settlement, that settlement is negotiated from a position of strength rather than desperation, and it is almost always for significantly less than the original claim. The flat fee is structured so that in well over 99 percent of cases, the client comes out ahead financially even after paying for representation.
The Hourly Alternative
For context, hourly billing for litigation in Missouri typically runs between $200 and $400 per hour depending on the attorney and the complexity of the matter. A collection case that runs six months with monthly court appearances, discovery, and motion practice could easily generate $3,000 to $5,000 in hourly fees. The flat fee eliminates that uncertainty entirely. You know what representation will cost before you commit to anything.
Why Debt Defense Works Well as a Flat Fee
Flat fee billing is not common across all areas of law, but it fits debt defense particularly well for a few reasons.
First, collection cases in Missouri follow a predictable structure. There is a return date, monthly call dockets, discovery, and eventual resolution. The process is well-defined, which makes it possible to scope the work accurately and price it fairly upfront.
Second, the goal in most collection cases is not to litigate indefinitely but to resolve efficiently. The flat fee aligns the attorney’s incentive with the client’s interest. Kris Boevingloh and George Pliakos built their practice around this model specifically because it removes any financial reason to drag a case out. The goal is always to get the best possible outcome as efficiently as possible.
Third, and most importantly, debt defense clients are typically dealing with financial stress. Open-ended hourly billing adds anxiety on top of anxiety. A flat fee removes that variable entirely. You know what representation costs, and you can make a clear decision about whether it makes sense without worrying about what a meter is running in the background.
What If You Cannot Afford Even the Flat Fee Right Now?
The monthly payment option exists for exactly this reason. Three payments of $200, spread over the first three months of representation, is designed to be accessible even for someone in genuine financial difficulty. If your case resolves quickly, the remaining balance is still owed, but the total cost never changes.
If you have concerns about the fee before your first conversation, bring them up during the free consultation. The goal is to make sure you have access to the representation you need, not to add financial pressure to a situation that already has plenty of it.
How to Think About the Decision
The clearest way to frame this decision is to compare what representation costs against what is at stake if you lose. If you are being sued for $3,000 and the flat fee is $550, you are spending roughly 18 percent of the amount at stake to have a real chance of paying nothing. If you are being sued for $10,000, that percentage drops further. If the case gets dismissed, you pay the flat fee and nothing else. If it settles for a fraction, you still come out significantly ahead.
The risk of not hiring representation is the default judgment, the wage garnishment, the bank levy, the interest that accrues for years, and the debtor’s exam. That is not a list of abstract possibilities. It is what happens to most people who ignore a collection lawsuit in Missouri. The flat fee exists to make sure that outcome is not the one you end up with.
Have Questions About Cost Before Getting Started?
A free consultation is the right first step. Kris Boevingloh and George Pliakos will walk you through the flat fee, explain exactly what it covers, and give you an honest picture of what your case is likely to look like. No hourly billing. No surprise invoices. No pressure. Just a straight conversation about whether representation makes sense for your situation.
To understand how the full debt defense process works in Missouri, visit our debt defense practice overview.
If you have already been served with a lawsuit, our consumer debt defense page explains how we handle those cases from start to finish.
For more on what happens when you first receive a summons, read our blog post What to Do When You Are Sued by a Debt Collector in Missouri.
To get started, call us or use the contact form on this site to schedule your free consultation.
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