A life care plan engagement is billed on the planner's time, typically against a retainer, and the fee is driven by the volume of records, the complexity of the injury, whether an in-person evaluation is required, and how many treating providers must be consulted. A scoped medical cost projection is the lower-cost alternative when the question is narrower than lifetime care.
Life care planning is professional time. The planner bills hourly for records review, the evaluation, provider correspondence, cost research, and report writing, and separately for deposition and trial testimony. Most engagements open with a retainer that is applied against hourly work, with the balance billed as the plan progresses. Rate schedules and retainer amounts are set out in the engagement letter, and the current terms for a life care plan engagement are available on request before any work begins.
The retainer is not a flat fee for the plan. It is a deposit against the time the work actually takes. A straightforward plan may finish within the retainer; a catastrophic pediatric case with a decade of records will not. Counsel should expect an estimate at intake and updated estimates as the record is opened, and should treat any planner who quotes a fixed price for an unread record with caution.
Four inputs account for most of the variation between one engagement and the next.
Volume and condition of the records. Reading the record is the largest single block of time. A recent injury with a few hundred pages reviews quickly. A birth injury case with neonatal, pediatric, therapy, and school records spanning years does not, and disorganized or duplicated productions add hours before analysis begins.
Complexity of the injury. The number of body systems involved, the number of specialties treating the person, and the number of categories of need all scale the plan. A single-limb amputation with a stable prosthetic plan is simpler than a high-level spinal cord injury with respiratory, skin, bladder, bowel, and attendant care needs that interact.
Whether an evaluation is required. An in-person evaluation, usually in the home, adds travel and a day of interview and observation, and it is the norm for a plaintiff-retained plan. A records-only review is appropriate for many rebuttal engagements and some updates.
Provider consultation. Every item in the plan needs a medical foundation. Where the record already contains the treating team's recommendations, the planner confirms them. Where it does not, the planner must correspond with each provider, wait for responses, and sometimes arrange an evaluation, all of which adds time.
Some cost is avoidable. Incomplete productions that arrive in waves force the planner to re-read and re-index. Late retention compresses the schedule and pushes work into rush time. Unclear scope leads to a plan that covers needs the case does not put at issue. Missing provider contacts mean the planner spends hours locating the right clinician for a recommendation the attorney could have obtained at a deposition.
The remedy is a clean intake: a single organized production, a clear statement of the questions the plan must answer, the names and contact details of the treating providers, and retention early enough that the plan can inform discovery rather than react to it. A planner retained after the close of fact discovery is often pricing care for which no physician has yet been asked to state a need.
The deliverable is a written plan that lists each recommended item with its medical foundation, frequency, duration, unit cost, and cost source, organized by category and summarized by year. Behind the report sits a work file: the records index, provider correspondence, cost quotes with dates and contacts, and the life tables relied on. That file is what allows the plan to be defended at deposition, re-priced at a later update, and handed to an economist for present-value calculation without re-derivation. The cost research methodology page describes how each figure is documented.
Not every case needs a lifetime plan. Where the injury is significant but the future care question is narrow, a medical cost projection answers it at a fraction of the cost. A projection is records-based, covers a defined set of medical needs such as a planned surgery and its follow-up, and typically carries a shorter horizon. It does not include non-medical categories such as attendant care or home modification, and it does not usually include an in-person evaluation.
The choice is about the question, not the budget. If the case turns on whether a person will need a knee revision and what it will cost, a projection is the right tool. If the case involves care across multiple categories for the rest of the person's life, the plan is the right tool and a projection will leave damages on the table or, for the defense, leave the plaintiff's plan unanswered. The comparison of the two sets out the differences in more detail, and the engagement process page describes how scope is set at intake.
Deposition and trial testimony are billed separately from the plan, usually at a different hourly rate with a minimum for the appearance and preparation time. Travel is billed at cost. An update to an existing plan is priced on the change: if the condition, the treatment plan, or the living situation has changed materially, the update approaches a new plan; if only the costs need refreshing, it is a fraction of that. Counsel should ask at intake how updates and testimony are billed so the total cost of carrying the plan through trial is understood from the start.
Not responsibly before the record is reviewed. An estimate is provided at intake based on the volume of records, the injury, and whether an evaluation is required, and it is updated once the records are opened. The engagement letter sets out the rates and retainer.
The methodology and the rates are the same on both sides. A defense rebuttal is often less expensive because it may proceed on records alone, but a defense-retained full plan with an evaluation costs what a plaintiff-retained plan does.
The retainer is applied against hourly work. Any unused balance at the close of the engagement is handled as set out in the engagement letter.
No. The present-value calculation is a separate engagement with a forensic economist. The plan is prepared so the economist can use it directly, which keeps that second engagement efficient.