Litigation Calculator
Most lawsuit budgets fail on one line: attorney time. This litigation calculator keeps the estimate honest and simple: enter an hourly rate and the hours the case is likely to take, add court fees, expert witness fees and other case expenses, and it returns each line plus one total you can plan around. It then goes one step further, the step the old tool left to hand math: enter the damages you are claiming, your own estimate of the chance of winning, and the settlement offer on the table, and it computes the expected value of going to trial and compares it with the offer, so the cost total becomes a settlement decision instead of just a bill.
Total estimated litigation cost
$0
Quick Answer
At $350 an hour for 100 hours, attorney fees come to $35,000. Add $500 in court fees, $2,000 in expert witness fees and $1,000 in other expenses and the total estimated litigation cost is $38,500, with attorney time making up 91% of it. On a $150,000 claim you rate at 60%, the expected recovery is $90,000 and the expected value of going to trial is $90,000 − $38,500 = $51,500. A $40,000 settlement offer sits below that expected value, so on these assumptions fighting on has the higher expected value. The calculator above is pre-filled with this exact case.
Key takeaways
- Attorney time is the budget. In the worked example it is $35,000 of a $38,500 total, so the hours estimate matters more than every fee line combined.
- The tool now values the case as well as costing it, but only from numbers you supply: damages, your chance of winning, and the offer. It never invents a probability for you, and a probability is a judgment, not a fact, so run the calculation at several chances before deciding.
- Discovery, depositions and mediation have no separate fields here. Put your best estimate for them in Other Expenses or the total will flatter the case.
- Blank fields count as zero and there is no error message. A total that looks too low usually means a line was left empty.
- Quick Answer
- How to use the litigation calculator
- The litigation cost formula
- Worked example: a mid-size contract dispute
- What lawyers and courts actually charge
- What this estimate leaves out
- Using the total to judge a settlement offer
- What competing calculators miss
- Frequently asked questions
- Add This Calculator to Your Website
How to use the litigation calculator
Fill in the eight fields with figures from your engagement letter and your lawyer’s early case assessment, then click Calculate. Results stay hidden until you do. The first five fields price the case; the last three value it.
- Attorney hourly rate: use the rate in your fee agreement, not a headline rate from an advertisement. If a team bills at different rates, use a blended average weighted by who does the work: partners cost more, associates and paralegals less.
- Estimated hours: ask your lawyer for a range by stage (pleadings, discovery, motions, mediation, trial preparation) and enter the middle of it. Then run the calculator again with the top of the range to see the bad-case budget.
- Court filing fees: the court’s own charges. A federal civil filing is $405; state court filing fees are usually lower but service, motion and transcript fees stack on top.
- Expert witness fees: review, report, deposition and testimony time. Skip this line only if your case genuinely needs no expert.
- Other expenses: discovery, e-discovery vendors, court reporters, mediation, copying and travel. This is the line most people underfill, and the one that makes early estimates look wrong later.
- Damages claimed: the recovery if you win, before costs. Use the amount claimed, and remember the tool takes your figure at face value.
- Chance of winning: your estimate of the probability of success, as a percentage. Ask your lawyer for a range, then run the low, middle and high ends: the expected value moves fast with this one input, which is the point of showing it.
- Settlement offer: the certain money on the table now. The tool compares it with the expected value of trial and says plainly which one is higher on your numbers.
If the dispute is about a job, the cost question usually sits next to a settlement question: the employment settlement calculator works the other side of that decision, what a settlement package is worth compared with fighting on.
The litigation cost formula
The cost calculation is one multiplication and one addition. The settlement calculation adds the standard expected-value step, using the probability you enter: no hidden model, and no probability the tool invents for you.
Total litigation cost = Attorney fees + Court fees + Expert witness fees + Other expenses
Expected value of trial = (Damages claimed × Chance of winning ÷ 100) − Total litigation cost
If you win = Damages claimed − Total litigation cost | If you lose = − Total litigation cost
Two behaviours are worth knowing before you trust the output. First, every result is rounded to whole dollars for display, while the total is worked out from the unrounded figures, so on fractional inputs the four displayed lines can be a dollar out from the displayed total. Second, the tool accepts whatever you type: blank fields and non-numeric entries count as 0, and negative numbers subtract from the total instead of raising an error. Hourly billing itself is the model the American Bar Association’s Model Rule 1.5 assumes when it lists the factors that make a fee reasonable, including the time and labour required, the difficulty of the questions involved and the fee customarily charged in the locality.
Worked example: a mid-size contract dispute
The pre-filled run is a business contract dispute handled at $350 an hour. Here is every line the calculator returns, plus two variations that show how hard the hours estimate drives the total.
| Run | Attorney fees | Court | Expert | Other | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Worked example: $350/hr, 100 hrs | $35,000 | $500 | $2,000 | $1,000 | $38,500 |
| Same case, hours double to 200 | $70,000 | $500 | $2,000 | $1,000 | $73,500 |
| Heavier case: $300/hr, 120 hrs, $800 court, $7,500 expert, $7,000 other (discovery and mediation) | $36,000 | $800 | $7,500 | $7,000 | $51,300 |
The worked example split as bars makes the structure of almost every litigation budget visible at a glance:
Now the settlement half, on the same two cost runs. The claim and the chance are the same in both rows, so the difference is purely the cost total:
| Case | Total cost | Expected value | Example offer | Verdict on these numbers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-filled run: $150,000 claim at 60% | $38,500 | $51,500 | $40,000 | Offer below expected value: trial has the higher expected value |
| Heavier case: $150,000 claim at 60% | $51,300 | $38,700 | $45,000 | Offer above expected value: settling beats trial on expected value |
Run the sensitivity yourself: on the pre-filled cost run, the expected value is $21,500 at a 40% chance and $81,500 at an 80% chance, so the same $40,000 offer flips from beating trial to losing to it as your confidence changes. That swing is why the probability stays your input, never the tool’s guess.
What lawyers and courts actually charge
A rate is only meaningful against the market. Clio’s Legal Trends billing data puts the average US lawyer at $349 an hour, and the spread by state is wide enough to change a budget on its own.
The Clio lawyer rates comparison breaks those averages down by state and practice area, and the pattern is consistent: big-city and specialist practices sit far above the national average, while small-market general practice sits below it. Court fees are the opposite: they are fixed by published schedules, such as the US District Court fee schedule, so the $405 federal filing fee is a known number, not an estimate. Budget the known numbers exactly and spend your uncertainty allowance on the hours line, where the real variance lives.
What this estimate leaves out
The total covers your own attorney time and three expense lines. It does not include the cost of losing, the cost of appealing, or the value of your own time, and it has no field for several costs that sink real budgets.
- Discovery as its own line: document review, e-discovery hosting and depositions are folded into Other Expenses here. On document-heavy cases they rival expert fees, which is why the heavier worked example above carries $7,000 of other expenses.
- Opposing party costs: under the American rule each side usually pays its own attorney fees win or lose, but statutes, contracts and court rules create exceptions, and taxable costs under federal law can be shifted to the loser.
- Appeals: the $605 federal appeal fee is trivial next to appeal briefing and record preparation, none of which is in the five fields.
- Contingency cases: if your lawyer works for a percentage of the recovery, the hourly model does not apply at all. Work that sum by hand: a 33% fee on a $150,000 recovery is $49,500, before case costs.
- Your time and disruption: depositions, document hunts and trial days cost a business real output. No field captures it, so treat the total as a floor, not a ceiling.
Using the total to judge a settlement offer
A cost total earns its keep when an offer lands. Compare the certain money on the table with the risk-adjusted value of fighting on. The calculator above now does that comparison for you, from the damages, chance and offer you enter.
The standard version is: expected value = (potential recovery × probability of success) − remaining litigation cost. On a $150,000 claim you rate at 60%, with $51,300 of costs still to spend, that is $90,000 − $51,300 = $38,700, which is the heavier row of the settlement table above. A settlement offer above $38,700 beats the expected value of continuing on those assumptions; one below it does not. Change the probability and the answer moves fast, which is exactly why the tool refuses to invent one for you: it computes the comparison, but the chance itself must come from you and your lawyer. For the claim side of the same decision, the lawsuit value calculator estimates what a case may be worth, and settling early usually cuts the hours line hardest: the early settlement calculator shows how timing changes what a settlement costs in a debt context.
What competing calculators miss
The tools ranking for litigation cost split into two camps: black-box estimators that bury their assumptions, and contingency-fee calculators answering a different question. Neither shows its working the way this page does:
- TheCalcs litigation cost estimator: the broadest rival, with partner, senior, associate and paralegal tiers, per-deposition and per-expert presets and a ±30% range. Strength: stage realism. Gap: the presets are its assumptions, not your engagement letter, and the layered inputs hide which number is actually driving the total.
- O’Flaherty Law’s Illinois estimator: close in spirit, with separate discovery and mediation fields and a trial-length input. Gap: hard-wired to Illinois fee levels and Cook County filing fees, so the defaults mislead anyone budgeting elsewhere.
- AequiFin’s litigation cost calculator: precise, but it computes German statutory fee schedules (RVG and GKG) and loser-pays cost risk. Correct law, wrong country for a US hourly budget.
- CalculatorsHub and Feher Law personal injury fee calculators: contingency tiers (33% pre-suit, 40% in litigation, 45% at trial), medical liens and net recovery. Useful math, but it answers what a client keeps from a settlement, not what litigation itself costs.
- SmartOnlineCalculator’s attorney fee calculator: hourly, flat and contingency modes side by side. Gap: no expense lines at all, so court and expert costs vanish from the estimate.
- The gap this page fills: eight transparent inputs, every line shown, market benchmarks from Clio billing data and published court fee schedules next to the tool, and an expected-value and settlement comparison built from your own probability instead of a black-box score or a probability the tool invents.
Frequently asked questions
It multiplies your attorney’s hourly rate by the estimated hours, then adds court fees, expert witness fees and other expenses to give one total estimated cost. It then computes the expected value of going to trial from the damages and the chance of winning you enter, and compares that expected value with the settlement offer you enter. It does not predict your chance of winning: that judgment stays with you and your lawyer.
Clio’s Legal Trends billing data puts the average US lawyer rate at $349 an hour. State averages run from $196 in West Virginia to $492 in Washington, DC, and specialist or big-city practices charge well above the average.
Filing a civil case in US federal district court costs $405, including a $55 administrative fee. A habeas corpus application costs $5 and a notice of appeal to a federal circuit court costs $605.
Discovery, e-discovery, depositions and mediation have no separate fields, so include your estimate for them in Other Expenses. The total also excludes appeal costs, any costs awarded to the opposing party, and the value of your own time.
Blank and non-numeric fields are treated as zero by design, and negative numbers subtract from the total. If a total looks too low, check for an empty line before trusting it.
A contingency lawyer takes a percentage of the recovery instead of billing hourly, commonly around a third before suit and more once litigation or trial begins. This calculator models hourly billing only, so work a contingency fee by hand: 33% of a $150,000 recovery is $49,500, before case costs.
Sometimes, in part. Under the American rule each side usually pays its own attorney fees, but a statute, a contract clause or a court rule can shift fees, and federal law lets the winning side tax certain costs such as filing fees, transcripts and witness fees.
From your lawyer’s early case assessment, not from this tool and not from a headline win rate. Ask for a range rather than a single number, then run the low, middle and high ends through the calculator: on the pre-filled run the expected value moves from $21,500 at 40% to $81,500 at 80%, so a range is the honest way to use the comparison.
No. It is a budgeting tool that adds up the numbers you enter. It cannot predict what a court will do or what your case will actually cost, so review any real litigation budget with a qualified attorney in your jurisdiction.
Add This Calculator to Your Website
Embed this calculator on your own site with the code below. Pick a size to preview it live, then copy the code.
Powered by Calculator Zilo
References
- American Bar Association. Model Rule 1.5: Fees. Accessed October 22, 2026.
- Clio. Compare Average Lawyer Hourly Rates by State, Legal Trends Report data. Accessed October 22, 2026.
- United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire. Fee Schedule. Accessed October 22, 2026.
- United States Courts. Court Fees. Accessed October 22, 2026.
- Cornell Law Institute, Legal Information Institute. 28 U.S. Code 1914: District Court; Filing and Miscellaneous Fees. Accessed October 22, 2026.
- Cornell Law Institute, Legal Information Institute. 28 U.S. Code 1920: Taxation of Costs. Accessed October 22, 2026.
- Cornell Law Institute, Legal Information Institute. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26: Duty to Disclose; Required Disclosures. Accessed October 22, 2026.
- Cornell Law Institute, Legal Information Institute. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54: Judgment; Costs. Accessed October 22, 2026.
- Cornell Law Institute, Legal Information Institute. Federal Rule of Evidence 702: Testimony by Expert Witnesses. Accessed October 22, 2026.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook. Lawyers. Accessed October 22, 2026.
- American Bar Association. When Overbilling Leads to Disciplinary Sanctions. Accessed October 22, 2026.