What Does a Criminal Lawyer Cost in the Netherlands?

If you or a family member has been arrested in the Netherlands, the cost of a defence lawyer is usually the second question, right after “what happens next?”. The answer depends on who pays. Dutch criminal procedure has a duty lawyer scheme that reaches a detainee automatically and costs the suspect nothing, and subsidised legal aid that covers many criminal cases outright. This article explains each route, what it covers, and which costs the state can still put on your bill.

The cost picture at a glance

Five separate things can appear on a criminal defence bill. They are governed by different rules, so keep them apart.

One thing does not appear: there is no court fee (griffierecht) for the accused in a criminal case. Court fees belong to civil and administrative proceedings.

Arrested: the duty lawyer scheme (piket)

How a lawyer reaches you without you calling one

The Code of Criminal Procedure (Wetboek van Strafvordering) gives every suspect the right to be assisted by a lawyer, in article 28. For a person taken into custody that right is made real by a notification duty: under article 28b the police notify the Legal Aid Board (Raad voor Rechtsbijstand) that a suspect is being held, and the Board assigns a lawyer from the duty roster. This is the piket scheme. You need not know a lawyer’s name, speak Dutch, or have money in your account: it is designed to work when you have none of those things.

Two rights follow. Under article 28c a detained suspect may consult a lawyer before the first police interview, for up to thirty minutes. Under article 28d the lawyer may attend interviews and intervene during them. A lawyer cannot answer questions for you, but can explain your right to remain silent and object if pressure is applied.

This first assistance is free to the suspect: the state pays the duty lawyer. Where you are arrested and held, are under 18, or are suspected of a serious offence, that first lawyer is not billed to you.

What piket does not cover

Piket is emergency cover for the custody phase, not representation for the whole case. It covers the consultation before the interview, attendance at police interviews and the first stages of detention, and ends once the application to remand you in custody (the vordering tot bewaring) has been dealt with by the examining magistrate. After that, the case must be picked up on a proper assignment or privately.

Two further limits matter. The duty lawyer is whoever is on the roster that night: you did not choose them and need not keep them. And if you are not detained but merely invited to an interview as a suspect, piket generally does not apply, so you would normally arrange and pay for a lawyer yourself unless you qualify for legal aid.

Assigned lawyer or lawyer of your own choosing

Dutch practice distinguishes between a toegevoegde raadsman, a lawyer assigned by the Legal Aid Board, and a gekozen raadsman, a lawyer you instruct yourself. The distinction concerns how the lawyer came to act, not the quality of the defence or the lawyer’s powers. Both have the same access to the file, the same right to attend interviews and hearings, and the same duties to you.

The point internationals most often miss is that the two categories overlap. A lawyer you choose yourself can also act on an assignment: if you pick a firm because it works in English, that firm can apply to the Board for a toevoeging on your behalf, provided it is registered with the Board and you meet the conditions. Choosing your own lawyer does not mean giving up subsidised legal aid.

You can also switch. If a duty lawyer attended the police station and you would rather instruct someone else for the substance of the case, the new lawyer takes over the assignment. The constraint is timing, not principle, so raise it early.

Subsidised legal aid: the toevoeging

Subsidised legal aid rests on the Legal Aid Act (Wet op de rechtsbijstand), which deals with criminal cases in a chapter of its own, articles 43 to 44a. If an assignment is granted, the Board pays your lawyer a fixed sum calculated from a points system and you pay at most a personal contribution. The point value and the points per case type are set by regulation and indexed annually, which is why two firms on the same assignment receive the same fee.

The means test and the reference year

Eligibility is tested on income and capital, and on a past year. For applications in 2026 the reference year (peiljaar) is 2024: the Board takes your taxable income (verzamelinkomen) and box 3 capital as they stood in 2024, from tax authority data.

If your income has fallen sharply since the reference year, you can ask for it to be moved to the current year. This is peiljaarverlegging, and the request must reach the Board within six weeks of the first decision, a short deadline that is easy to miss while a criminal case is running.

The exception that matters most in criminal cases

Here is the part that changes the picture for most detained suspects. In many criminal cases an assignment is granted without any means test. Where a suspect has been taken into custody and remanded, the assignment follows from the detention itself rather than from a financial assessment. The same applies where the public prosecutor or the court asks the Board to issue one.

The practical consequence is that a suspect far too well off for legal aid in a divorce can still be represented on an assignment in a criminal case, because pre-trial detention triggers it regardless of income. The division runs through the Legal Aid Act (Wet op de rechtsbijstand): article 43 covers duty lawyer assignments and assignments made of the court’s or the prosecutor’s own motion, which are granted without any means test, while article 44 covers the ordinary assignment, for which income and capital are assessed. Your lawyer will tell you at the first meeting which basis applies.

The personal contribution (eigen bijdrage)

Where legal aid is granted on the ordinary route, you pay a personal contribution set by band according to income in the reference year. These are the 2026 amounts for a lawyer in a non-family matter.

In criminal cases the contribution is frequently nil. None is charged where the public prosecutor or the court has asked the Board to grant an assignment, and duty lawyer assistance during police custody (inverzekeringstelling) is exempt from a personal contribution altogether. The situations in which people most fear the bill are often the ones in which it is smallest.

A contribution paid is not always lost. Where the case ends in an acquittal or a decision not to prosecute (sepot), a contribution the accused has paid can be reclaimed from the state by petition under art. 530 Sv, alongside the rest of the costs of the case (see below). In litigation generally, where the other side is ordered to pay your legal costs, the contribution can be recovered or set off rather than borne by you.

Paying privately

Outside legal aid, criminal defence is billed in one of three ways, sometimes combined.

• Hourly rate. The most common model. The rate reflects seniority and specialisation, and VAT is added for private clients. Disbursements such as interpreters, expert reports and travel are billed on top.
• Fixed fee. Offered for clearly bounded work: attendance at a police interview, a single hearing before the politierechter, an objection against a penalty order. It works where the scope is predictable, and is usually quoted per stage rather than for the whole case.
• Retainer or advance payment. Firms normally ask for a payment on account before starting privately paid criminal work, drawn down against interim invoices. This is standard practice, regulated by professional rules.

What drives the size of a criminal defence bill is rarely the hourly rate; it is the volume of work. A file of several thousand pages, telecom or financial data requiring analysis, requests to the examining magistrate to hear witnesses, a psychiatric report, a multi-day trial, an appeal, an interpreter at every meeting: each multiplies hours. So does detention, because prison visits consume time and travel.

Ask for the fee basis in writing before instructing anyone. A Dutch lawyer must give you an engagement letter setting out the rate or fee, what it covers and how disbursements are handled, and should tell you whether you might qualify for an assignment instead.

Costs the state can impose

Conviction, or accepting a penalty order, can carry financial consequences beyond your own lawyer.

• Fines and penalty orders. A fine imposed by a court, or by the prosecution service in a strafbeschikking, is collected by the Central Judicial Collection Agency (CJIB).
• Administrative and collection charges. The CJIB adds an administrative charge to fines it collects and applies statutory increases if payment is late. In 2026 that charge is €9.00 per decision for penalty orders and traffic fines. For traffic fines under the Wahv the first increase is 50% of the fine and the second a further 100%.
• Compensation to a victim. A court can order a convicted person to compensate a victim’s loss as a measure enforced by the state (art. 36f Sr), so the victim need not sue separately. Under the advance payment scheme the state steps in eight months after the measure becomes enforceable, pays the victim what is still outstanding and then pursues the offender for it. For offences of violence and sexual offences the advance is the full amount, with no ceiling; for offences against property it is capped, at a figure with an index base of €5,000.
• A general contribution to the costs of the criminal justice system. Proposals to make convicted persons contribute to the cost of their own prosecution and to victim services have been put forward in the past, but no general bijdrage kosten strafvordering en slachtofferzorg is in force in 2026.

Getting your costs back after an acquittal or dismissal

If your case ends without a punishment, by acquittal or because it is dropped, you can apply to the court for compensation. Two provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure do the work: article 530, covering your lawyer’s costs and other costs of the case, and article 533, covering time spent in pre-trial detention.

The request must be made within three months of the case ending. It is decided by the court that dealt with the case, on a written application your lawyer prepares. Claimable items include lawyer’s fees, travel expenses, and material and non-material damage such as lost earnings. The courts work with standard daily amounts for detention, published in the sentencing reference points and indexed with effect from 1 January 2026.

Two limits are worth knowing. Compensation is not automatic: the court weighs what is reasonable and may award less than claimed, or nothing. And nothing is available for the period immediately after arrest during which you were held for questioning.

Legal expenses insurance

Many households hold legal expenses insurance (rechtsbijstandverzekering), often bundled with home or motor cover. In criminal matters its usefulness is limited: policies typically exclude intentional offences and cover only negligence-based matters, most commonly road traffic cases. Check the conditions before instructing anyone, because insurers generally will not reimburse costs incurred before the claim is notified.

Where a policy does respond and the matter goes to a court hearing, European and Dutch law give an insured person the right to choose their own lawyer, whom the insurer must fund within the policy limits. If you would rather use a firm of your own choosing than the insurer’s in-house service, say so at the outset.