It’s common for attorneys representing landlords in eviction cases to charge attorney fees. It’s also common for the tenant to foot the bill, on top of late fees and back rent owed.
Sometimes, attorney fees are a flat rate, while other times they're a percentage of the total amount owed, said Phil Storey, attorney at the Virginia Poverty Law Center.
The practice turns predatory when attorneys charge hundreds, sometimes $1,000, for a case that requires little effort and time in court, he said.
And that’s exactly what’s happening in Virginia, according to a new report from the Virginia Poverty Law Center and Virginia Commonwealth University's Eviction Lab.
The research shows attorneys across the state charged more for eviction cases in 2024, than in 2019. It also shows attorneys are more regularly charging $1,000 for a single hearing, which is “egregiously unreasonable,” said Storey, who co-authored the report.
The trend holds in Hampton Roads. Eviction rates in Hampton Roads have decreased since pre-pandemic peaks, but they’re still among the highest in the state and country. Housing advocates say the region’s housing shortage and high housing costs are at the root of the issue. Ballooning attorney fees add fuel to the fire.
The largest local increase was in the city of Hampton, where attorney fees for eviction cases nearly doubled since before the pandemic. Virginia Beach had the smallest percent increase in the region but had among the highest amount of total attorney fees awarded. In both 2019 and 2024, attorney fees in Virginia Beach totaled over $1 million after adjusting for inflation.
Most eviction cases are about missed rent payments, Storey said. Tacking on additional fees make it more difficult for them to get back on their feet.
“It's really just profiting off somebody's poverty,” he said. “If they were not already struggling financially, they wouldn't be in this situation, and so you wouldn't be charging them these extra fees.”
‘A vicious cycle’
The eviction process in Virginia happens quickly, said Jordan Crouthamel.
Crouthamel is a senior program manager for the Virginia Eviction Reduction Pilot with ForKids in Chesapeake. The program educates tenants on their rights and responsibilities as renters, how the eviction process works and financial management. The program also offers limited financial assistance, he said.
He said it “just takes one thing” to become at risk of eviction.
“We see a lot of folks that are just making ends meet, and they're making it work 70% of the time, but then all of a sudden a big bill comes,” he said.
It could be a medical bill, car repairs or having to miss work to care for a sick kid. It often boils down to making “agonizing choices,” he said, like choosing between food or rent.
“It's not lavish expenditures,” Crouthamel said. “It's literally just the day to day expenditures that you’ve got to make to make life work.”
One missed rent payment can result in a game of catch-up that can be impossible to win, especially with late fees and attorney fees stacked on top of already stretched budgets, he said.
“It's not uncommon for us to see four and five filings in a year,” he said. “If somebody is pretty consistently struggling, they're eligible to pay those attorney fees every single one of those times.”
Bloated attorney fees don’t just make life harder, according to the report. It says they infringe on tenants’ legal rights.
In Virginia, tenants have a “right of redemption,” which means they can get eviction cases dismissed if they pay the amount owed before the first court date, Crouthamel said
But this amount includes attorney fees.
“A lot of times, what happens is that people will think they know what they owe,” he said. “They've got exactly the amount of rent they know they owe, but then all of a sudden, it says, ‘Hey, you've actually got a $375 attorney fee on top of that.’”
Solutions
The report pointed out that the Virginia Supreme Court has required “reasonable” attorney fees for more than a century. Formally educating judges on how to assess if attorney fees are reasonable is one solution, the report stated.
“That would go a long way to helping sort of standardize things a little more across the Commonwealth,” Storey said.
To help judges make an informed decision, the report also recommended passing legislation to require attorneys to attach a breakdown of their fees. This practice is already required in some Virginia courts, like those in Fairfax County in Northern Virginia, Storey said.
“If a landlord's attorney is saying, ‘I charge $1,000 an hour, and it's going to take me five hours to do this,’ that's probably not reasonable,” Storey said. “It's way over the market rate, and so a judge would catch that when they're reviewing this attorney fee affidavit.”
Educating tenants when to speak up and question attorney fee amounts is another piece, Crouthamel said.
“We always encourage people to attend court and to speak up if they see that something is wrong, or to ask if they have a different understanding of their balance,” he said.
Addressing the affordable housing crisis would attack a root cause of the issue, Storey said.
Organizations like Yes In My Backyard and Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Virginia, as well as local delegates, have been discussing policies to make it easier to build more affordable housing in Hampton Roads.
Del. Shelly Simonds (D-Newport News) announced in September 2025 she wants to end parking minimums in Virginia to pave the way for more housing.
“The rents here and the incomes that you need to sustain them are just not keeping pace,” Crouthamel said.