What Percentage do Personal Injury Lawyers Take?

In general, a Pompano Beach personal injury attorney works on a contingency basis. This means their fees are deducted from the settlement or damages awarded. If you don’t get any money, the lawyer doesn’t get paid. Most contingency fee agreements give personal injury attorneys 33%-40% of the settlement.

Upfront Fees and Expenses

Other costs in your lawsuit include the expenses for things like pre-lawsuit discovery and investigation and discovery, expenses if the suit goes to trial, and if you appeal. What these costs include can vary from case to case. Typical additional costs include:

• Filing fees for the personal injury suit and any other legal documents
• Fees for serving the complaint, summons, and other documents on the defendant
• Charges for finding medical records, police reports, and locating witnesses
• Expert witness fees
• Court reporting fees
• Consultant fees
• Mediation fees
• Jury fees (the government pays fees in criminal trials, while litigants share the fees as part of court costs)
• Administrative expenses such as postage, phone, copying, mileage or travel costs, to list just a few.

Because attorneys generally get paid on contingency in personal injury cases, they usually advance these costs and recoup them when the case is won. If the case is unsuccessful and there is no settlement or the case is lost at trial, you may or may not be responsible for repaying your lawyer. This should be spelled out in your contingency fee agreement.

Negotiating with a Personal Injury Attorney

There are some instances where you may be able to negotiate payment terms with your personal injury attorney. However, most attorneys won’t bring this up, so you will have to do so yourself. If you’ve already investigated your accident and gathered all the documentation, you may be able to convince your lawyer to lower their fee. Here are some types of fee agreements that factor in the work you've already done:

Settlement Negotiation Only

In this instance, you may be able to negotiate a lower contingency fee if your lawyer gets a settlement without going to trial. However, they may set it up so that if they go to trial they get a larger fee. This is because they will have to do more work and incur more expenses.

Specified Settlement Amount

If you have already received an offer, and you hire an attorney to help negotiate a higher sum, you can structure your contingency differently. If your lawyer helps you get more than the insurance company has already offered, they will get a basic 25% fee of the original amount offered and a higher percentage of anything they can negotiate over that initial amount.

Hourly Fee up to a Specified Limit

You may be able to negotiate an hourly rate until their fees reach an agreed upon limit. If your claim is not settled once you reach that limit, the fee will switch to an agreed upon contingency fee.

Can You Pay for Legal Advice by the Hour?

It is unusual for a personal injury lawyer to agree to be paid by the hour, but it does happen. If you go this route, your attorney will set the fee and you pay a deposit. The deposit is put in a trust account and you sign an agreement to the hourly rate. As your lawyer works on your case, they will send you itemized statements, and the funds are moved from the trust account as the bills come in. These types of agreements are unusual in personal injury lawsuits, they are rare. The contingency fee agreement is much more common.

Medical Liens in Personal Injury Lawsuits

When you are injured in an accident, the medical bills start to pile up. Because you are injured and may lose days of work, or not be able to work at all, these bills may go unpaid. In fact, part of your case is to cover medical costs, both present and future. If you have not paid any medical expenses, you may have a medical lien filed against you. Payment for this lien usually comes out of your settlement.

Pay Attention to Payout Clauses

Your contingency agreement will have a payout clause that details how the fee is structured, and the percentage your attorney will get if the case is settled or you win the case. Carefully read this section, so you know what to expect. The upfront costs that your lawyer has paid usually come out of your share of the settlement. And any medical liens or unpaid bills from health care providers will also be paid out from your share of the settlement.