Reply to How much are you actually paying your advocates/attorneys and are they even worth it?

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Reply to "How much are you actually paying your advocates/attorneys and are they even worth it?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We've gotten a lot of feedback on this thread but I'm still curious to know the hourly rates for advocates. Is there a difference in rates based on whether the non-attorney advocate has a background in education vs being a parent who has been through the process? You don't have to share the name if you don't want to but I want to know: 
1. rate
2. background in education (former teacher)? parent? other?
3. school district

[/quote]

I was charged $300 for someone who used to work at a private school, didn't know the law, gave us bad advice, and didn't know how to help us overcome resistance from the school. That was the same rate as the much much more effective and knowledgeable attorney who we later hired. I soooo wish we had just gone right to the attorney. [/quote]

it’s insane these advocates charge $300/hr when they have no actual credentials. What’s more insane is they know parents are desperate enough to pay it and that’s how they get away with it. Even if someone ends up not using them they are making more than the majority of people make a day in one single hour. unbelievable. Attorneys charge that much because they actually are credentialed and expected to know the law and policies etc…[/quote]

Yes, that's what my attorney charged (years ago so it probably went up) and that seemed reasonable/low to me as an attorney myself who would bill much higher. I too thought it was insane once I realized a non credentialed "advocate" was charging the same exact rate! [/quote]

What do advocates do vs what attorneys do? I would think advocates with an educational background can help revise the IEP and attorneys can help enforce compliance with the IEP process.  Is that how it is working for most? $300/hour is outrageous.[/quote]

Our first advocate as a bulldog, but got the job done. The first thing she wanted to do was observe the classroom where our child was struggling and the teacher was so bad and they knew this advocate was so fierce they basically switched our kid. So we waited a few weeks and had the advocate observe there and low and behold it was a good match. Suddenly they were giving out child all the services on the IEP too, so basically just hiring her got things moving. Her reputation preceded her so they knew not to mess with her. No meeting needed. The rest of the year went fine. She retired.

A few years later we hired another advocate. She was focused on how the IEP was written and getting more services. The extra services were fine the first year, but pretty lousy after that and we didn't want to keep having to have meetings and pay and advocate. It was stress, time off from work and draining. Same thing with how the IEP was written. Being detailed and focused on wording helped right after the meeting, but things fell apart by the next school year and once again we just didn't have the energy for it all. It was more worth it financially and mentally to simply get the services outside of school and have low expectations for school. It kept the peace with the team and way less stress on us.

One year we did hire a lawyer, but the issues were egregious and we wanted to get to the point. It was efficient and lasting, but not cheap. I don't recall the price of all this, but I know everything went way up in cost after the pandemic.[/quote]

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