Legal Question in Family Law in California

You don't provide a statement following "in 15 minute increments." Did you mean to ask what that statement means? If so, it means that the lawyer does not track his or her time to the exact minute but rather tracks time and bills in segments of a quarter hour. So you will be charged in chunks of $62.50 at a time. Whether they round partial quarter hours up or to the nearest quarter hour is unclear. So I can't tell from that statement whether they would bill you $125 or $187.50 for 35 minutes of actual work, but it would be one or the other.

I have never heard of an attorney rounding the hours down. In every case, in my experience, a 15 minute billing increment means that the attorney's work for 15 minutes is charged for 15 minutes. Work that takes 15 minutes and 1 second is charged for 30 minutes.

My office and many other offices charge in increments of 6 minutes (.1 hrs). You might want to look for a lawyer with this type of billing practice.

At $250 per hour, your 3 minute telephone call to your current attorney would cost you $62.50. With the .1 hour billing, your call would cost you $25.00. That difference really adds up, during the course of litigation.