One of the most frequent questions I receive when approached by a client with a potential personal injury claim is “How much is this going to cost me?” The simple answer is that for a personal injury client, we don’t charge you anything at all up front because we believe that personal injury claims should have what is called a “contingency fee contract.” A contingency fee contract allows your attorneys to represent you without charging an hourly rate and without paying a large retainer. The way it works is that we will only get paid if you get paid, based on a certain percentage. In most cases, this percentage varies, depending on what has happened in your case. We typically charge a one-third fee (33.333%) of the settlement if we are able to resolve your case prior to filing a lawsuit. If the insurance company isn’t agreeing to pay you what you are entitled to and we are forced to file a lawsuit, that percentage increases. The percentage may increase again if we are forced to take the case to a jury trial and later take the case up on appeal.
So, for example, if your personal injury motor vehicle case is resolved for $30,000.00 before a lawsuit is filed, our fee, no matter how much time and effort we put into your case, will not exceed $10,000.00. A contingency fee contract is beneficial in a number of ways.
- First, there is no upfront cost, which can be especially difficult right after you suffer a major injury and may be off work for a period of time.
- Second, you don’t have to worry about calling us whenever you have a question because you won’t be running up any bill. We represent you, and always want to answer your questions, and because of the contingency fee, we don’t have to worry about how much it will cost to have a conversation with you.
- Last, and most importantly, our interest is in making sure you get the best outcome for your case possible. In a contingency fee contract, you don’t need to worry about us dragging your case out in order to collect more fees. You also don’t have to worry about us taking a discount in order to get your case resolved because the more money we put into your pocket, the more money we make as well. When we work together on the same team, it creates a positive incentive to maximize the amount we share.
It is important to note that there are additional expenses sometimes that we charge in addition to the contingency fee contract. For example, filing fees paid to the Court to begin your lawsuit, or paying for court reporters at a deposition, or paying hospitals for your medical records. However, these additional fees typically work out to be a very small portion of the overall claim.
Contingency fee contracts are a wonderful way for us to represent clients in personal injury cases because it allows our interests to be aligned, and for our clients to feel connected to their attorneys without having to pay an arm and a leg to get superior service.
