The engagement letter usually shows up a day or two after the first meeting, four or five pages long, and most people sign it because the funeral is over and something has to move. That is the wrong moment to skim. The fee paragraph is only part of what matters, since the scope paragraph decides which work the fee actually buys, and the costs paragraph decides what you will be billed for on top of it. A careful reader goes through both before looking at the number, because the number means nothing without them.
Three ways the work gets priced, and what each assumes
A flat fee is a bet on predictability. For an uncontested probate of a will with independent administration, where the heirs agree, the assets are a house, a couple of bank accounts, and a vehicle, and nobody expects a fight, a firm can price the whole path from application to letters testamentary with reasonable confidence. Hourly billing is the opposite bet: the lawyer does not know how long this takes, and neither do you. Percentage fees, common in some states as a statutory schedule, are not how Texas attorneys typically charge, though the executor's own commission is a separate percentage question set by the Estates Code.
What a careful reader checks in a flat fee is where it stops. Most flat quotes cover the application, the citation period, the hearing, the order admitting the will, and the oath, and then stop cold at anything contested. If an heir files an opposition, if the will turns out to need two witnesses tracked down, if a creditor sues, the letter usually converts to hourly at a stated rate. Find that sentence. Read the rate, read whether paralegal time bills separately, and read the minimum billing increment, because tenths of an hour and quarter hours produce different invoices for the same phone calls.
The county's money and the lawyer's money are different money
Filing an application to probate a will costs a filing fee set by the county, not by the firm. In El Paso County, as elsewhere in Texas, the district and county clerks publish fee schedules, and the probate filing fee, the citation, the posting by the clerk, certified copies of the letters testamentary, and any publication in a newspaper are all charges that pass through the lawyer's trust account rather than into the lawyer's pocket. So are ad litem fees when the court appoints an attorney to represent unknown heirs, which happens routinely in an heirship proceeding where there is no will.
A good engagement letter separates these plainly and says who advances them. Some firms front the filing fee and bill it back at cost; others ask for a costs deposit alongside the retainer and draw against it. Either is fine, but the letter should say which, and it should say whether costs are billed at cost or with a handling markup. Certified copies matter more than people expect, since every bank, title company, and county tax office wants its own, and you will order more than one round.
Who pays, and from where
The executor hires the attorney personally, which is why the letter names you rather than the estate as the client, and that distinction survives into the billing. Texas law allows the personal representative to be reimbursed from estate assets for reasonable attorney's fees and court costs incurred in administering the estate, so in practice the money comes out of the estate before distribution. The timing is the catch: the estate bank account does not exist until the letters issue, so the first payment often comes from your own funds or from a family member's. Say so out loud in the first meeting and ask how the firm usually handles it.
Questions worth asking in the first consultation
Ask which court the case will land in and how that court currently sets hearings, because a statutory county court's docket shapes the calendar more than the lawyer does. Ask what is excluded: contested matters, an heirship determination, ancillary probate for land in another state, deed preparation, and tax work almost always are. Estate income tax returns and the decedent's final return fall under the IRS, which is responsible for federal fiduciary and individual filings, and most probate engagement letters send that work to a CPA. Ask who returns your calls, and ask for a written estimate of court costs by name.
Sign nothing on the day. Take the letter home, mark the scope paragraph, the conversion-to-hourly sentence, and the costs paragraph, and bring your three questions back. A firm that answers those clearly in writing is the one worth hiring.