A walk through Washington impaired driving procedure and the cost of defending one, assembled from district court calendars, published fee schedules and four consultations. Not legal advice, and the statutes cited get amended.
The consultation is free because it is a sales meeting, and that is not a criticism, it is simply the fact that organizes everything else about the hour. A defense firm is deciding whether your case is worth taking at the price it intends to charge, and you are deciding whether the person across the table has read the paperwork or is working from the arrest summary alone. Both things happen at once. A reader who understands that will spend the hour differently, and will leave with quotes that can actually be compared against each other rather than four numbers floating free of any description of the work.
Bring the discovery, or at least the citation and the ticket number
The single largest source of quote variation is not firm quality, it is information. A lawyer working from your description of the stop will price defensively, adding cushion for the possibility that the report contains something ugly, while a lawyer holding the narrative, the breath test ticket, the calibration records reference and the video log can price the actual case. Washington counties differ in how quickly discovery arrives, and in the early days after arrest you may have only the citation, the notice about your license and a court date. Say so plainly, and ask whether the quote will change once the packet lands. The answer to that question is more useful than the number itself.
The four questions that produce answers instead of reassurance
Ask who appears at the arraignment, at the pretrial hearings and at the suppression hearing, by name and not by firm, because in a practice with associates those can be three different people. Ask what the fee covers if the case resolves at the second pretrial, and what it covers if it goes to a contested hearing on the stop. Ask how many times, in the past year, that lawyer has litigated a motion to suppress in the specific district court where your case sits. Ask what the Department of Licensing hearing costs, separately, because it usually is separate. Vague answers to specific questions are themselves data, and a careful reader writes down which questions were sidestepped.
Why identical facts draw very different numbers
A low quote and a high quote on the same report often describe two different plans. The lower figure frequently assumes a negotiated resolution, a reduction where the prosecutor's office is open to one, and a handful of appearances, with litigation billed later or priced as an add-on that appears in the agreement as a second stage. The higher figure often folds the suppression motion, the expert review of the breath instrument's maintenance history and the trial preparation into a single number paid up front. Neither is dishonest. They become comparable only when you force each firm to state what the fee stops covering, and the phrase to use is simply: what would trigger an additional payment.
What to check after the meeting, not during it
Check the Washington State Bar Association listing for the individual lawyer, not the firm name, and note the admission date and any discipline history. Check whether the office is physically near the court that has your case, because appearance travel shows up in scheduling flexibility more than in price. Ask for the written fee agreement to read at home rather than signing in the room, and compare the scope paragraphs side by side, since that paragraph, more than the dollar figure, is the product you are buying. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is responsible for the standardized field sobriety testing protocols that the officer's report will reference, and a lawyer who can tell you which of the three tests was administered, and how, has read the file.
Building the comparison you can actually act on
Reduce each consultation to four lines in a notebook: total fee, what triggers more, who appears, and the licensing hearing handled or not. Most spreads collapse once those four lines are filled, and the remaining difference is usually experience in that particular courthouse, which is worth paying for when the case has a suppression issue and worth less when it does not. If one firm is far below the others and the scope paragraph matches theirs, ask directly why. Sometimes the answer is a lighter caseload or a newer practice, which can be an advantage. The point of four meetings is not four opinions. It is one clear picture of the work, priced by people who have each seen the same page.
Give it a week if the arraignment date allows, since the license deadline moves faster than the criminal case and is the one clock worth confirming in every meeting.