Attorneys. Fee card 7.
We read the thing you signed.
You didn't. Almost nobody does.
Last March a woman in Fenwick signed a two-year lease on the hood of her car, in the rain. The landlord held an umbrella over the signature line and nothing else. Twenty-six pages. She read the rent and the paragraph about the dog. The lease went in a drawer. So did everything in it.
Send us a document you have signed or are about to sign. Within 48 hours you get one page, in plain English, with the three clauses that matter. The fee is printed further down this page. Nobody has to call anyone.
Send a documentOne page. 48 hours. Flat fee.
Definitions
In this website, unless the context requires otherwise:
- Document
- Anything you signed, initialled, clicked or scrolled past on the way to a button that said Agree.
- Read
- Every word, once, by a person. Including the capitals, the schedules, and the footnote to the schedule.
- Plain English
- The words you would use to tell a friend what the document does. Where a legal term has to stay, we say what it is doing there.
- 48 hours
- Two days from the moment we confirm receipt. Weekends count. "Business days" is not a phrase we use.
- You
- You. Not the Party of the First Part, the Undersigned or the Licensee.
- We
- Dunmore & Reyes. The two people in clause 6.
1.The problem
Every January we average the word counts of the documents clients sent us the year before. The tally for 2025:
| Document | Words |
|---|---|
| Residential lease | 9,400 |
| Gym or club membership | 11,200 |
| Terms of service, one app | 15,800 |
| Car finance agreement | 7,600 |
| Condo bylaws, with schedules | 22,000 |
| Employment agreement | 6,100 |
| Terms of service, the other app | 18,300 |
| A normal year of signing things | 90,400 |
Ninety thousand words is a long novel, written by committee and paid by the hour, and nobody expected you to finish it. The industry's answer has been to make the type smaller.
The other answer is to have someone read it for you, which raises the question of what for.
2.What we read
Most of a contract is scaffolding: who the parties are, which court, what happens if a page goes missing. We read the scaffolding so we can tell you it is scaffolding.
Then we look for three things. Three, because three is what a person can still recite a week later.
- What it costs beyond the number on the front: fees, increases, penalties, the thing payable the day you leave.
- How you get out, and what stops you. Notice periods, renewals that happen on their own, the window you have to hit.
- What you are giving up. A deposit, a right, a day in court, your photograph.
If a document has a fourth thing, you get the fourth thing. If it has one, you get one. We once sent back a page that read, in full: "This is fine. Clause 9 lets them raise the price once a year with 30 days' notice." The client asked for a longer one. He could not have one.
How that page gets to you is less mysterious than the trade likes it to look.
3.How it works
-
Step 1
You send it.
Photographed, scanned, forwarded, or the link to the terms you clicked. If it is a 40-page PDF, send all 40. We confirm receipt the same day, and the clock starts then.
-
Step 2
One of us reads it. Then the other argues.
The first reader goes through the whole thing once with a pencil and marks what matters. The second tries to knock a mark off the list, and about a third of the time one comes off.
-
Step 3
You get the page.
It says what the document is, what each marked clause does, and what we would want to know if it were ours. No letterhead. No cover letter explaining the letter.
There is no onboarding call. We have never worked out what gets onboarded.
The only thing left is the price, which is the part most firms keep behind a phone number.
4.The fee
Flat, per document, printed here so you can decide before you talk to anyone.
| Document type | Fee |
|---|---|
| Residential lease | $180 |
| Gym, club or subscription agreement | $120 |
| Terms of service or app agreement | $120 |
| Car or equipment finance agreement | $220 |
| Employment agreement or offer letter | $260 |
| Condo or homeowners' bylaws | $340 |
| Anything else under 15,000 words | $220 |
| Over 15,000 words | add $60 per 5,000 |
The fee is for the reading and the page, not for doing anything about what we find. If that needs a lawyer who goes to court, the page names the kind, and it will not be us.
Is that cheap for two lawyers? Yes. We manage it because we do nothing else. No court, no drafting, no reception, no suite. Why flat and not hourly? Because an hourly rate is a promise to be slow.
What the fee buys is a finding. Here are five.
5.Found last month
Five things found in last month's documents, details changed. Examples of what turns up, not a forecast of what is in yours.
- A gym membership agreement, 14,000 words, containing the word "perpetuity". It governed the gym's right to any photograph taken on the premises. The client joined for six weeks before a wedding. The photograph rights run longer.
- A residential lease that charges rent for the month after you leave, under the name "move-out reconciliation period". We asked what was being reconciled. Nobody could say.
- An employment agreement whose non-compete covered "any business engaged in commerce". The client is a dental hygienist. As written, she could not work at a bakery. The employer's lawyer said the wording was standard. We believe him.
- Condo bylaws, 24,000 words, letting the board fine an owner $50 a day for a front door in an unapproved colour. Approved colours are listed in Schedule F. Schedule F was not attached. We asked. The board is looking.
- A car finance agreement with an "optional" protection plan at $1,900 on page 3 and the sentence making it optional on page 11. The option lapsed 72 hours after signing. She had owned the car a month. We could do nothing about the $1,900. We could tell her the loan runs 72 months, not 60, because the plan was financed too.
None of these documents was unusual. That is the finding.
Who read them is the next clause.
6.The lawyers
Fourteen years drafting commercial leases, so she knows where the clauses are kept because she kept them there. Reads with a pencil. Does not own a highlighter and has views about people who do.
Nine years in consumer finance, on the side that wrote the agreements. Left the week a colleague called a 19-page addendum "a quick one". Reads standing up. Says losing an argument to Margaret is the point of having it.
There is no one else. No associates, no paralegals, no team. When we are both away, this website says so and the clock does not start.
7.Questions
Do I need to be in trouble to send something?
No. Most of what we read has not gone wrong yet. The best time to read a lease is before it is one.
Will you tell me whether to sign?
No. We tell you what it says. Whether to sign depends on things we do not know, like how much you want the apartment.
Do you fight for me?
No. We read for you. Fighting is a different trade with different shoes.
Everybody says 48 hours.
They do, and most mean two business days from when someone opens the email. We have missed ours on four files since 2019. All four got the page for nothing.
Why is there no free consultation?
Because a free consultation is a sales call with a diploma behind it. The fee is in clause 4. The consultation is this page.
What if the document is not in English?
We read English, Spanish and Portuguese. Anything else, we say so when we confirm receipt, at no charge.
8.The lease on the hood of the car
She sent it to us in April, a year in. Clause 28 says the tenant confirms she has read this agreement in full and was given adequate time to do so. The umbrella is not mentioned.
Her page went back on the Thursday. One of its three clauses concerns the first five days of the eighteenth month. It is on her fridge now. Send us yours.