WELCOME TO THE TEAM
Thank you for engaging Soule Employment Law Firm to represent your business or organization. Mimi Soule started this practice to work with other like-minded business owners and to support the small business community. As a small business owner herself, she understood the challenges of managing and growing a team and created this practice to meet those specific needs. We achieve this by providing you with proactive legal guidance and strategies, by giving you educational and practical tools to implement in your business, and by introducing you to other, complementary local resources and service providers in our small business network.
We very much look forward to working with you!
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HOW TO CONTACT US?
If you want to schedule an opportunity to speak with a Firm attorney, please contact Mimi Soule through the calendaring system available HERE. Please understand that responses to your emails/voicemails may require 24-48 business hours depending on our availability.
- If you have a question about making a payment or about your invoice, please contact finance@soulelawfirm.com.
- If you have a question about your retainer status or trust account balance, please contact Rena Pappas (rena@soulelawfirm.com).
Conflicts of Interest
Before a Firm attorney can confirm a consultation, the Firm must undertake reasonable and customary efforts to determine whether there are any potential conflicts of interest with other clients that would prevent the Firm from working with you. The Firm attorney will try to confirm any conflict with you before the applicable scheduled consultation.
Firm Client / Attorney-Client Relationship
The Firm’s client is the applicable business or entity and does not include any affiliates of such person or entity unless the Firm’s Managing Partner has specifically agreed to such representation. The attorney-client relationship will be considered terminated upon completion of the services that you have retained the Firm to perform. After completion of a specific engagement, changes may occur in applicable laws and regulations that could affect your rights and liabilities. Please understand that the Firm has no continuing obligation to give advice with respect to any future legal developments that may pertain to this matter. If you later retain the Firm to perform additional services, our attorney-client relationship will be renewed subject to the Firm’s updated terms of engagement in place at that time.
Communications and Confidentiality
Please note that the Firm has found email to be an efficient, reasonably private means of communication; however, it is not a perfectly secure medium. Unless you specifically direct us otherwise, the Firm will use unencrypted email to communicate with you and to send documents that we have prepared or reviewed related to this engagement. Additionally, as a matter of professional responsibility, attorneys are generally required to preserve the confidences and secrets of our clients. This professional obligation and the legal privilege for attorney-client communications exist to encourage candid and complete communication. Accordingly, we trust that our attorney-client relationship will be based on mutual confidence and unrestricted communication that will facilitate our proper representation of you.
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WHAT ABOUT FEES?
Like most law firms, the Firm charges fees primarily based on hourly billing rates. Because we are not a litigation-based firm, attorneys bill for understanding your issue and the guidance they provide, which may include reviewing a summary or document(s) that you provide regarding the issue/question, responding to your questions on a telephone call, video conference or via email, providing you with template documents to use, and revising or preparing any documents for you.
Attorneys are billed between $350 – $600 per hour and paralegals are billed between $75.00 – $150.00 per hour; below is a current breakdown of our fee structure. As you will see, the Firm seeks to reward businesses that try to do some advance planning and strategy before making employment-related decisions by offering lower rates for proactive requests for support.
The Firm also bills for the reasonable value of any reused work product and out-of-pocket expenses, such as postage, photocopying, travel expenses (e.g., hotel, mileage, transportation, meal expenses, and filing, recording and certification of documents. Your monthly invoice will include an accurate itemization of these costs, if any.
| Service Type |
Current Hourly Rates |
| Proactive (Week+) Work requested or required to be started after one week (6 or more business days) |
$350 |
| Proactive (Within the Week) Work requested or required to be started within one week (2-5 business days) |
$400 |
| Same Day Work requested or required to be started on the same day, within 24 business hours, on a holiday, or over a weekend |
$600 |
| Adversarial Any work involving investigations, government audits, communicating with opposing counsel, negotiating settlements and/or restrictive covenant agreement terms, cease and desist letters, administrative charges, unemployment hearing prep, litigation support *unless Same Day rate applies |
$450 |
*Non-profit organizations receive $100 off all hourly rates.
NOTE: the Firm reviews and updates its rates from time-to-time – typically every 2-3 years.
WE HATE SURPRISE INVOICES TOO…ASK ABOUT ESTIMATES AND FIXED FEES
We try to provide fee estimates for requested legal work before diving in (generally, only if the work will require more than 1-2 hours of time). Please understand that sometimes it can be challenging to provide this estimate on the front end if your requested support is emergent. We are always happy to discuss fee estimates or fixed-fee options with you at the beginning of a project so you are never surprised by an invoice. We do our best to offer these options when appropriate, but we also encourage you to ask your attorney about them as well.
How do Fixed Fees Work?
The Firm may offer a fixed fee for specific projects such as drafting a new employee handbook, drafting an employment agreement, or crafting a response to an administrative claim. Please contact us about specific project fees. We can generally offer fixed-fee options when the project starts with the use of a Firm resource – as opposed to Firm attorneys reviewing and revising a client document or template. For example, if you wish to engage us to do a legal review of your existing Employee Handbook or current Restrictive Covenant Agreement, we can only offer an estimate for this type of project.
In most situations, fixed fees are invoiced in two equal installments: 50% is paid at the time that you ask us to start the work and the balance is paid at the time that we complete the work and invoice you – this may be at the time that we provide you with a draft document for your review or after we complete a consultation. All fixed fee payments, including any partial payments, are earned by the Firm when paid and are not held in the Firm’s trust account. If any fixed fee project terminates during the course of our work – for example, you decide to terminate the project – the fixed fee is terminated and you will be billed on an hourly rate basis for all time spent by the Firm on the matter.
What About Retainers?
In most situations, the Firm does not require retainers; however, we may require a retainer before starting a large project or in the event that a client has failed to timely process payments for Firm services previously. Additionally, some clients who work with us routinely prefer having a retainer on file to simplify their billing process. If we do require a retainer for any reason, we will obtain your approval and funds prior to performing any related work. Retainer funds are held in the Firm’s trust account. As legal services are performed for you, the Firm deducts the cost of the services from the trust account funds and sends you a statement which provides an updated balance of your trust funds.
How Are Fees Paid?
The Firm will send you an invoice each month by email to the billing contact you identify for work performed and expenses incurred during the previous calendar month. Payments may be made by credit card or check mailed to us at PO Box 97552, Raleigh, North Carolina 27624. For international clients only, we will also accept payment by wire transfer, if needed. Please contact finance@soulelawfirm.com for wire transfer instructions.
The Firm’s invoices are due upon receipt. Following your receipt of an invoice please contact finance@soulelawfirm.com immediately if you have any questions. Please note that, in the event that the Firm does not receive any communication from you regarding an invoice within 30 days following your receipt of such invoice, the Firm will be entitled to assume that you have agreed with the amount and will pay the same. Any statement which is not paid within 30 days of its date will be considered past due and the Firm reserves the right to charge interest at the rate of 1½% per month until paid. In addition, we expressly reserve our right to withdraw from, deny and terminate our working relationship if you fail to pay any bill. Finally, in the unlikely event that the Firm is required to institute legal proceedings to collect its fees and costs, you agree that the Firm will be entitled to reasonable attorneys’ fees not to exceed 15% of the unpaid balance, and other costs of collection, if the Firm prevails in such action.
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WHAT SERVICES DO WE PROVIDE?
We provide three (3) key services to business clients geared towards reducing your exposure to unnecessary liability:
- employment law advice – before you make a hiring, benefit, disciplinary or termination decision, contact us to discuss both potential legal benefits and risks to avoid unnecessary surprises;
- employment-related contract and policy review and drafting – before you have an employee sign a document, contact us to discuss whether the document is legally binding and enforceable to avoid having a document that offers you no value or protection; and
- administrative claim defense – if an employee or former employee files a complaint or charge with an administrative agency, contact us to discuss the claim process and the options for us to help you resolve it as quickly as possible.
Scope of Work
These terms, along with any agreed-upon engagement summary provided to you by the Firm via email, describes the services the Firm has agreed to provide. Firm attorneys will act on your behalf to the best of their ability. Any expressions on their part concerning the outcome of your legal matters are expressions of their best professional judgment, but are not guarantees. All opinions provided are necessarily limited by their knowledge of the facts and are based on the state of the law at the time they are expressed.
You Won’t Find us at the Courthouse.
Unlike traditional employment law firms, the Firm does not provide traditional litigation services for its clients in the court system; our goal is to help you avoid litigation if at all possible. We do, however, routinely provide guidance to employers on how to respond to administrative claims and represent clients in administrative matters before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the NC Division of Employment Security (NC DES), the US Department of Labor (DOL) and the NC Department of Labor (NCDOL). In our experience, most employment disputes can be resolved effectively at the administrative stage without the need of litigation – especially if we have been able to coach you through your employee management and disciplinary processes on the front end.
Why did we stop litigating, you ask?
In short, the Firm’s primary goal is to actually help you avoid costly litigation and legal claims altogether. Litigation is not only expensive, but also demands your time and attention and interferes with your ability to focus on growing your business. To avoid this unnecessary distraction, we built this practice to focus on giving you practical strategies and procedures to reduce the likelihood of litigation. And in the event that it still occurs, we have nevertheless given you stronger defenses to help you and your litigation counsel resolve it more quickly.
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NEED TO TERMINATE OUR ENGAGEMENT?
You may terminate the Firm’s representation or services on a project at any time by notifying Mimi Soule via email at msoule@soulelawfirm.com. Your termination of the Firm’s services will not affect your responsibility to pay the Firm for legal services rendered and expenses incurred before termination and in connection with an orderly transition of the matter, if applicable. The Firm’s right to terminate representation is subject to the limitations and obligations imposed by the relevant administrative agency rules and the Rules of Professional Conduct, if applicable. You should be aware that several types of conduct or circumstances might permit or require the Firm to withdraw from representing you such as nonpayment of fees or costs, misrepresentation or failure to disclose material facts, action contrary to the Firm’s advice, and conflicts of interest with another client. If withdrawal ever occurs, the Firm will promptly provide you with written notice, including via email.
Document Retention
At the conclusion of our representation, the Firm will return to you any documents that you specifically request be returned; however, you agree that the Firm may retain copies of all documents for its records.
Rev. 8/13/2025