Are legal fees to draft a lease a current expense, and what about legal fees to evict a tenant?

Both are generally treated as current expenses, deductible in the year you pay them. Legal fees to draft or negotiate a lease are a normal cost of operating a rental property and don't create any lasting asset beyond the ordinary business of renting the unit out, so they're deducted the same way as other day-to-day operating costs.

Legal fees to evict a tenant are treated the same way, because you're generally enforcing rights you already have under an existing lease rather than acquiring something new. This is different from legal fees connected to buying the property itself, which are capital costs added to the property's purchase price rather than deducted currently - a distinction worth keeping straight, since people sometimes assume all real estate legal fees are treated the same. If you're dealing with a more unusual situation, like legal costs tied to a major renovation or a dispute over ownership itself, the character of those fees follows whatever they relate to, so it's worth looking at each type of legal expense on the rental property separately rather than assuming a blanket rule covers everything.