A family-based adjustment quote arrives as a single number, say a flat fee for the marriage petition and the adjustment package filed together, and the number sits there looking complete. It is not complete, and it was never meant to be. Underneath it are government fees paid to a different party, documents that have to be obtained and translated before anything can be filed, and a set of possible next steps that the agreement prices separately or does not price at all. The careful reader treats the headline figure as the first line of a longer arithmetic, not the total.
Flat and hourly are two different promises about risk
A flat fee is a bet on scope. The representative estimates the hours a typical case of that type consumes, adds a margin for the ones that go sideways, and quotes a number that does not move if your case turns out to be the sideways one. An hourly agreement moves the risk to you: a clean case costs less than the flat quote would have, and a case with three requests for evidence costs considerably more. Most family petitions, naturalization applications, and straightforward employment filings are quoted flat. Removal defense and complex waiver work more often runs hourly, or on a hybrid of both.
The comparison only means something if the flat fee's scope is written down with enough precision to argue about later. Look for the sentence that names the specific forms covered, and look for what follows it. An agreement that says it covers preparation and filing of the petition, the adjustment application, the work permit and the advance parole request, plus attendance at one interview, is telling you where the line is. One that says it covers your green card case is telling you nothing you can hold anyone to.
What counts as a new matter
This is the clause that decides most later disputes. A new matter is work the agreement treats as a separate engagement with its own fee, and the definition varies widely. A request for evidence is sometimes inside the flat fee and sometimes a fixed add-on. A notice of intent to deny is almost always separate, because responding to one is a different kind of work. An appeal to the Administrative Appeals Office, a motion to reopen, a motion to reconsider, a new filing after a denial: all of these are commonly priced as extras, and the honest agreements say so on the first page rather than the eighth.
The same question applies to people. If your spouse's case is covered and your stepchild's is not, that should appear in writing before anyone pays. If the fee covers the petition but not the consular processing that follows approval, that is a second engagement with a second number, and it is worth asking for that number now, while you are still choosing.
Government fees, translation, and retrieval sit outside
Filing fees and biometrics fees are paid to the government, not to the representative, and they belong in their own column of the budget. They change on their own schedule and are not refundable if the case is denied. Beyond them sit the costs almost nobody quotes at the outset: certified translations of foreign civil documents, retrieval of birth and marriage records from abroad, police certificates, medical examinations by an authorized physician, and court dispositions from old cases. A good agreement lists these as client responsibilities so that you can price them yourself. The Federal Trade Commission oversees how consumer services disclose their fees, and clear written disclosure is the standard worth expecting here.
Payment tied to stages, not to the calendar
The better flat-fee agreements break payment into installments that attach to events: a portion at signing, a portion when the package is assembled and reviewed with you, a portion at filing, the balance at interview or approval. That structure gives both sides a visible measure of progress, and it means you are not paying for a stage that has not happened. Hourly agreements handle the same problem with a retainer held in trust and drawn against itemized time, billed in increments the agreement should name. Either way, ask what happens to unearned money if you end the engagement early, and read the refund clause before you need it.
Take the agreement home. Read the exclusions first, then the payment schedule, then the headline number, and write down every cost the document assigns to you rather than to the representative. That list, not the quote, is what the case will actually cost.