Did you recently get involved in any type of personal injury accident? Sometimes these things happen even if you are on the job. If yes, you must be wondering about the costs associated with appointing a personal injury lawyer. Usually, people who get involved in personal injury accidents call lawyers and ask them – “Is it expensive to hire a personal injury lawyer?”
If you too are one among them and you’re hesitating to hire a Spokane injury attorney due to the thought of expenses, you better go through the concerns of this post. We’ll discuss the details of the fees associated with the services of a personal injury attorney. Keep reading to know more.
Details on the fees of a personal injury lawyer
Before you visit the office of a personal injury lawyer, you need to know that the cost to hire one is much different from hiring a divorce or business attorney, who charges $400-500 per hour of consultation.
Instead of such hourly-basis fees, personal injury lawyers work based on a contingency fee. If you don’t know what a contingency fee is, it is the fact that the attorney will only be paid when the client receives the compensation amount either by winning a trial or through settlement.
Now you must be wondering how much a contingency fee is. A contingency fee is a certain percentage of the total recovered settlement amount. As per the trend, injury attorneys demand one-third of the total amount recovered or 33.33%. Nevertheless, there are other lawyers that may charge 30-40% or even higher. In case the case moves to litigation and you have to file a lawsuit, the fees of the attorney may spike up.
How is a contingency fee beneficial?
Unlike other forms of attorneys, you neither have to pay an hourly rate nor an upfront cost of $2000 or any amount the lawyer charges. This is a huge benefit as the majority of the people who think they can’t afford the services of an injury lawyer are actually mistaken.
What is the pitfall of this contingency fee basis?
Apart from the benefits, there are also some downsides to contingency fees. The amount is a lot of money. You must be thinking of the amount to be one-third of the amount recovered but you have to pay medical bills from the settlement amount too.
This is a huge amount as the attorneys who take on the cases on this fee basis are taking up maximum risk. In case there’s no recovery amount, the attorney won’t be paid a dime. Hence, the risk is entirely theirs.
Other things to be aware of contingency fees
Whenever you sign up with an injury attorney, everything should be in writing. The ‘retainer agreement’ should set the actual relationship between your attorney and you. The retainer agreement should be crystal clear and if there’s anything you don’t understand, make it clear.
Retainer agreements have something known as the ‘attorney lien’ clause. This implies your lawyer has a stake in the case or vested interest.
So, as you see, it is not an exorbitantly costly affair to hire a personal injury lawyer. Hire the most reliable one and stay on the safer side.
