Can my attorney charge me a fee to ship my file to me?

Check your retainer agreement. Mine provides that you pay for a copy that I keep plus costs to mail to you. The file belongs to you, but your retainer agreement (or other contract) may allocate costs and be consistent with legal ethics.

It is not unlawful or unethical for an attorney to ask the client to pay for costs that he or she incurs in following the directives of the client. This is almost always covered in the attorney-client agreement. Good luck to you.

As the other attorneys have said here, the first place to look is the retainer agreement, which may address this. Also, it is pretty customary for attorneys to charge photocopying costs and similar out of pocket costs to supply files to a client, a "prior client" especially where there may have been some bad feelings when that relationship was terminated. Also, it's fairly common to require the physical costs of copying and shipping to be recovered because lawyers invariably keep copies of everything in the files they ship "prior clients" to protect themselves if such "prior clients" are disgruntled and are thinking about filing malpractice and disciplinary claims. Lastly, retainer agreements frequently address what happens if clients owe money or fee sharing agreements (contingency clients) when they want to switch lawyers (which is their absolute right) or how long files must be stored before they are destroyed (typically shredded) or offered to be returned to the client. Archiving "dead files" in a remote storage facility is expensive, just like storing stuff in a storage locker, as is retrieving files. Attorneys provide legal advice and assistance, and many people seem to think lawyers should keep copies of, e.g., the title report on a house they bought ten or twenty years ago forever when they're looking for a copy they themselves have lost or thrown out.

This is a bit of a gray area in New York personal injury law. When I substitute another attorney, if I want their file, I will have to send a check for the photocopying. However, charges attributable to law office overhead (read, photocopying) are not properly charged to the client as a disbursement. Many lawyers will pass this cost on to the client, reasoning this is not the same photocopying as copying correspondence to place in the file; this is obtaining the client's complete file from the outgoing attorney. A different take on this is that the file belongs to the client, so the outgoing attorney may not charge for the file, no matter what the retainer says. Shipping costs, on the other hand, come squarely under the category of law office overhead and should never be passed on to the client where there is a contingent fee arrangement.

Your former attorney is correct. Your file is your personal property. Although your former attorney is required to return the file to you, s/he is not required to pay the costs of shipping the file to you or to another attorney unless you made specific arrangements to that effect. You former attorney should have your file available for pick-up at his/her office without charge. Shipping a file, which can be as voluminous as several banker's boxes, is an expense that is usually borne by the client.