I had drinks with a good friend last night. During our conversation, the nature of my business was discussed at length. Specifically, we discussed how my attorney fees work. The example that was discussed was what if he was in a car wreck and the drunk driver caused him to have several surgeries totaling over $100,000 but the drunk driver only had $25,000 in insurance coverage, the state minimum in Kentucky and Indiana. The question was whether my attorney fee would be based off the $100,000 in medical bills or the $25,000 that would actually be recovered. The answer is my fee is supposed to be, for non-litigation cases, 33.33% of the amount I recover not the amount of my client’s damages. Any personal injury attorney who is worth a damn will have a policy wherein he advances the costs associated with prosecuting the claim and wherein you will owe nothing if he recovers nothing. There is nothing set in stone as to attorney’s fee. An attorney can charge whatever percentage you will agree to in regard to his/her personal injury claim. However, this is where my unwritten policy comes into play. In the above example, my fee contract would entitle me to a fee of $8,333. However, if we play things straight up, the remaining $16,667 would be eaten with my client’s medical expenses leaving my client with $0 and a whole lot of medical expenses. My job as a personal injury attorney is not only to recover as much money as I can for my injured client but also, to make my client’s net recovery as much as possible. Why would anyone ever used the Desmond Law Office, PLLC twice if I am putting $5,000 in my pocket from a case and the client only recovers $500. This is why my unwritten policy is that I will never let my client’s net recovery be less than the amount of my attorney’s fee. If we go back to the above example, I would submit all of my client’s medical expenses to his health insurance. His health insurance would then have an ERISA subrogation claim which is a fancy way of saying they could recover whatever they paid out in medical expenses from his personal injury settlement. I would then request a waiver of this subrogation claim from the health plan. If they did not agree to a waiver but instead demanded, for example, $10,000 of the $25,000 settlement, I expect I would lower my fee to around $5,000 thereby leaving my client with at least $10,000 from the personal injury settlement while getting his medical expenses paid. Whether it is my law office or any other personal injury attorney, make sure that they have your best interests in mind. From a consumer standpoint, you can negotiate an attorney fee agreement and you want to know what safeguards this attorney has to make sure you get the lion’s share of any personal injury settlement. attorneydesmond/Blog/Car-Wrecks/74/The-Ins-and-Outs-of-Personal-Injury-Attorney-Fees?s=&o=
Posted on: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 13:42:10 +0000
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