What is a Contingency Fee Retainer?

A contingency fee retainer is where your lawyer does not get paid unless you get paid. They typically take the Attorney Fees out of any recover that may have been gotten for you. If  your case is eligible for a contingency fee retainer, you most like will not be forced to give your attorney any money unless they get you money. Most Car Accident Lawyers work on Contingency fee retainers.

            I take several kinds of Cases on a contingency fee retainer, these include Car Accidents, Motorcycle Accidents, Diminished Value Claims, Personal Injury, Premises Liability(Slip and Fall), Property Damage Claims and most Insurance Claims. All of these types of cases I take on a contingency fee retainer. Generally, a contingency fee retainer will be paid by a percentage of the recovery. In other words, the amount that the Attorneys fees could be is not set and is a variable. Attorneys fees for contingency fee retainers are generally set by the State Bar that the attorney is licensed in. Therefore, for the cases that I accept on a Contingency fee bases, the retainer is already governed, I can’t change it significantly without breaking a Bar Rule. Attorneys fees on the cases I accept on a contingency bases are also mostly the same throughout the entire country.

            The cases I cannot or do not accept on a Contingency Fee bases are Security Clearance Defense, Traffic Violations, Aviation Defense Pilot Defense and some other Civil Litigation cases. As a general matter, the licensing organization will not allow me to accept Traffic Violations on a contingency fee bases because that would violate a Bar Rule.

            Other matters to discuss in a contingency fee retainer are the various clauses of the agreement. These include the amount of the Attorneys fees that will be taken out. The Bar allows for a sliding scale of Attorneys fees for a Lawyer to charge in a Contingency Fee agreement. In other words, If I recover over a million dollars for you as a client I do not get the same one third percentage as I did with the first million dollars. And, that percentage decreases as the recovery increases.

            Furthermore, I hope that all my clients are happy with representation and stay with me but if the client decides to terminate the representation of a contingency fee retainer, the Attorney can generally have a “quantum meruit” lien on any settlement another Attorney gets on the case. A “quantum meruit” lien means that a reasonable sum of money to be paid for services rendered or work done when the amount due is not stipulated in a legally enforceable contract. In other words, the attorney is owed a reasonable fee for their time spent on the matter. Quite often if you terminate the representation in a short period of representation, there is no “quantum meruit” owed or claimed.

The Law Offices of Christopher G. White, P.A. is a Global Law Firm available for free consultations via Facetime, Skype and Zoom. Please also check out my website at chriswhitelawyer.com. Thank you for reading, please checkout my other practice areas. I also have a Youtube Channel, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Blogger, Reddit, Avvo and Justia. Thank you for your time and consideration.