In short
10 000–25 000 Kč
fixed fee
A long-term visa or employee card, prepared and filed
1 500–3 500 Kč
consultation
Mapping your options
15 000–40 000 Kč
per instance
An appeal against a refusal
Immigration is the field where paying a lawyer is most obviously optional — thousands of people file employee-card renewals themselves every month — and where a mistake costs the most time. Pricing follows that logic: routine filings are cheap to get help with, and rescue operations are not.
How immigration lawyers price
Most work is fixed-fee, because the products repeat. Market practice in Prague and Brno looks roughly like this: a consultation mapping your options, 1 500–3 500 Kč; document review before you file yourself, 2 000–5 000 Kč; full preparation and filing of a long-term visa or employee-card application, 10 000–25 000 Kč; permanent-residence applications with their timeline arithmetic, 15 000–30 000 Kč; citizenship files, often 20 000–40 000 Kč. Corporate relocation packages (an employer moving several hires) are quoted per case but per-person prices drop quickly.
Hourly billing (commonly 2 000–4 000 Kč) takes over where the path is unclear — mixed purposes, expired statuses, inspections — and in appeals and litigation.
The rescue tier is its own category: an appeal against a refusal or a lawsuit against ministry inaction typically runs 15 000–40 000 Kč per instance. Compare that to the cost of the underlying problem — months of lost work authorisation, a broken five-year residence count — and the economics of doing the original application carefully explain themselves.
A document review before filing costs a tenth of an appeal after a refusal.
The state fees on top
Not paid to your lawyer
- Administrative fees — set by the Administrative Fees Act (Act No. 634/2004 Sb.) and consular tariffs, commonly around 1 500–5 000 Kč per filing. Amounts differ between embassy and in-country filings, so check the current schedule for your permit.
- Certified translations — typically 300–600 Kč per page of a foreign document.
- Apostilles and nostrification — from your home country, and for diplomas where required.
- Language exams — A2 or B1 for permanent residence and citizenship. First attempts are state-funded in defined cases; repeats are paid.
What drives the price up or down
Three drivers dominate.
Document geography. A Canadian criminal-record extract with an apostille and certified translation is a different project than a Slovak one.
Status cleanliness. Continuous legal residence with tidy filings is cheap to extend; a missed deadline converts a 2 000 Kč renewal into an appeal-tier problem.
Deadlines. Immigration work compresses badly — the 60-day window after losing a job, the last-day renewal, the 15-day appeal all price accordingly.
Keeping costs down is mostly calendar discipline: diary the renewal window when the permit is issued, not when it expires; keep every filing confirmation; scan every document you ever submit. And use lawyers where they add leverage — a document review before filing costs a tenth of an appeal after a refusal.
A note on "visa agencies"
The market has agencies pricing below lawyers. Some are excellent administrators; none can represent you in appeal proceedings, and the Advocacy Act reserves legal representation to attorneys. The practical test: who signs the power of attorney, and who answers when the ministry sends a defect notice? For clean, standard filings an agency or a careful applicant is often enough. For anything touching refusals, gaps, or the five-year count, you want someone who can litigate the file they built.
On CasePilot, immigration specialists list languages — including English, Ukrainian, Vietnamese and Russian — alongside rates and reviews, and the fixed-fee question ("what exactly does the price include, and what costs extra if the ministry asks for more?") is precisely the one to ask in a first consultation.
Indicative ranges, not official rates. A lawyer’s written quote is what counts.
This guide is general information, not legal advice.
