A personal injury attorney expects any client to pay both costs and fees. Clients that are hiring a lawyer for the first time should learn how a cost differs from a fee.
A contingency fee pays for the lawyer’s services
The amount of money paid to a personal injury lawyer depends on the outcome for a particular client’s case. Most agreements specify an amount in the range of 30% to 40%. Another issue that needs to be addressed in the contingency agreement concerns the matter of costs.
Personal injury lawyers do not assume that their clients stand prepared to cover their case’s costs, if that same case does not have a favorable outcome. Instead, the issue of costs gets mentioned in the document that provides information on the contingency agreement’s details. If an attorney expects each client to cover the expenses/costs, in the event that he or she does not win an award, then the prospective client gets told about the attorney’s expectations. Clients that do not want to make that commitment need to find a different personal injury lawyer in Waterdown.
Clients also have the right to put a limit on the expenses/costs created by a hired lawyer’s performance of his or her duties. Obviously, the client’s ability to set that limit becomes remains inconsequential, until the same client has signed the formal document/agreement, which specifies the extent of the requested limit.
The term costs refer to the attorney’s expenses, which must be paid during preparation and pursuit of the client’s case.
Lawyers need to pay a number of fees, during their pursuit of any given case.
Here is a listing of typical fees:
• Filing fee
• Fee for serving the complaint
• Charge for medical records and police report
• Court reporting fees
• Money used to pay experts or consultants
• Cost of mediation services
• Jury fees
• Travel costs
• Money used to cover expense of phone, postage and copying services
The timing for the contingency fee’s removal from the client’s award can vary from one lawyer to the next. The money to cover the expenses can get removed from those awarded funds before or after the contingency fee’s removal from the sum available to the attorney that has won the case.
Why should clients care about the timing for those events? The timing affects the amount of money paid by the client. If the money that will cover the expenses gets removed from the awarded funds after the hired lawyer has taken his or her fee, then the client ends up paying more money.
Why is that true? Before the lawyer’s fee gets paid, there is more money available for covering the expenses. After that payment has been made, the client makes up the difference.