How much of a personal injury settlement will I be entitled to? 46 Answers as of March 29, 2012

Not true, but depending on the case, you may find an attorney that agrees to that.

It is not necessarily true.

In California there are no laws about the amount an attorney can or will charge for their services. I caution you in attempting to deal with the insurance company on your own. They are trained to make you feel as if they are looking out for your best interest and will treat you fair. The reality is that the insurance adjuster has one goal in mind: settle your case for a little as possible as quickly as possible. Once you settle, your claim is over. Before you decide whether you need an attorney or whether an attorney will add value to your case, I suggest you speak with an experienced personal injury lawyer.

It all depends on your contract with the attorney. If you have money already on the table, an attorney may agree to take the case and only recover a percentage of any additional money he obtains. In other circumstances he/she may not agree to that. If you signed a contract with an attorney, it will spell out what he/she is entitled to.

It depends, but generally no. Most attorneys will charge their fee based on the entire recovery.

Not necessarily. Depends on whether your claim is substantial enough to accept.

No, the attorney can charge you a percentage of the total amount recovered. However, you may be able to negotiate with him/her to get him/her to only take a fee off of the additional amount he/she was able to help you recover. There is no rule that restricts the attorney's fee to only the extra amount.

You and the attorney can agree to that if the attorney chooses to. Many attorneys would not undertake that representation, however.

It probably won't work as there will be a complete and final settlement when you are paid.

Most attorneys will charge their share for the entire settlement unless you negotiate and get an agreement for him or her to do something different. Usually an attorney with experience can get a better settlement than an individual on their own. He knows how to find the right "buttons" to push and arguments to make and legal issues to address.. Also you may jeopardize the attorneys future work if you do not handle the process correctly.

Workers Compensation Law has a similar rule that states that once an impairment rating is issued, an attorney can only charge a fee based on the difference between the impairment rating and the ultimate settlement. There is no such rule in general PI law. Often, if you have received an offer, and attorney will agree to charge only a percentage o the difference, but it is not required.

If an attorney will agree to do that, you can. None can be forced to do so, however. The work that needs to be done to maximize recovery in a personal injury case is the same for the last bit as for the first part- in other words, an attorney will have to the same amount of work regardless of the settlement offer you have on the table. That being the case, there are few times when an attorney will agree not to take a fee. For example, if your case is worth 10,000, and the insurance company offers you 4,000, the attorney will still have to get the case ready for trial to recover the last 6,000 for you. Since that work would normally earn the attorney a fee on the full 10K, only an attorney without much business is going to invest the time to earn less. If you tell a qualified attorney what the offer is on the table before you hire him however, many will tell you if it is worth your while to hire him or better to just proceed alone. A bigger concern is that if you wait to hire an attorney till you try to work things out yourself, you might harm your case. Witnesses and evidence will be harder to secure the longer you wait. You may give up your privacy privileges if you sign documents without realizing what you are doing. Few lay people, or even attorneys who only "dabble" in personal injury cases are prepared to do all the things that are required to be successful in a lawsuit. Studies show that claimants with attorneys get more money than those without- typically 4-5 times more. Since there is never truly enough money to compensate for an injury, it makes sense to hire an experienced lawyer to do the work. Remember that you only get one chance to get it right!

If an attorney can get you more money damages (after the lawyer's fee) than what you could get on your own, then it is worth it to hire an attorney. Talk it over with an attorney. I am sure you can work something out or at least the attorney can explain to you all of your options.

The fee you pay your attorney may be anything you two can agree upon as long as it is not illegal in any way. The process you describe is the way I handle such cases. But it may be that your case is not worth more than what is offered or maybe a little more. Why should an attorney do a lot of work on a case for a small fee? It all depends on the facts of your case. How badly hurt you are, what your bills are, what the carrier has offered and whether it is in the reasonable range. If it is why would an attorney want to get in at any fee? I usually agree to help folks like that when it is clear that the offer is much too small and I am reasonably sure I can do a lot better. If the offer is reasonable or close to reasonable I tell the client to handle it on his own. You may have a small claim and an unreasonable view of what you ought to get. Nobody ever, ever gets what they want or what they think they ought to get. Almost everything is a compromise in one way or another

The principle which you are referencing only applies in Workers' Compensation matters where there is a written offer. Even then, a Workers' Compensation attorney can demand a much higher percentage of the amount that is eventually negotiated. In a personal injury action, your attorney would earn the contingency fee (typically one third) whether you hired them the day after the accident or whether you hired them the same day they negotiate the settlement. It is always better to retain counsel early on to make sure that you are memorializing the extent of your injuries and that you are not receiving appropriate medical care.

No that is not true. Certainly some attorneys will take a case based on that type of agreement. It is up to the attorney and you to come up with a fair agreement. You can do damage to your case by trying to negotiate it on your own. I would recommend that you allow an attorney to handle your case or that you at least talk to an attorney before you begin to negotiate.

That is up to negotiation with the lawyer. We make those deals all the time.

A personal injury lawyer generally charges a third of any recovery. Most attorneys will not take a case under the scenario you describe. In fact, it is not recommended because one of the primary services an attorney performs is assessing the value of a case and adding to that amount. By trying to negotiate the case on your own, you are setting a ceiling on a recovery and by the time you finish" negotiating" there is not much room left for an attorney to do any good. In other words, you are limiting what the attorney can do for you by telling an adjuster what you will take and then negotiating down from that point.

Not true unless you have that in the agreement. Fees are a matter of contract.

There are no hard and fast rules regarding what a lawyer should be paid in situations like this. My office has done it the way you suggested many times. Other times, it was not warranted. The one thing you are not taking into account is what an experienced lawyer can do for your case if he/she has it from the beginning. A good attorney knows how to posture a case effectively with the insurance company so they set their reserves properly. Also, experts or investigators may need to be secured at the beginning and you would not necessarily have access to these people. Finally, a trained attorney will know when it is appropriate to sign documents for an insurance company, when to give statements (if at all), etc. You can actually be hurting the value of a potential claim by not taking the proper steps. The insurance industry's own statistics show that having an attorney on a claim will increase the injured party's recovery. I strongly suggest you don't do this yourself. I have seen too many clients make this attempt and only hurt their case. In many instances, an attorney cannot "reverse" what has transpired.

If the attorney is good, that is all they will charge. Tell them when you meet with them and get them to agree to it in writing and you're all set. That being said, you can do some real damage to your settlement if you go about it and do a poor job so be careful.

No, to my knowledge there is no hard and fast rule in that regard. It is subject to negotiation between the client and the attorney. However, most attorneys, like myself, will gladly agree to that deal. It would not be fair to do otherwise.

Depends on the deal you want to work with the attorney. The attorney does not have to agree to only accept fees on the portion above that which the insurance company has offered you, but then again you have the option to not hire an attorney who won't agree to that condition. If you choose to go that route, keep in mind that the formula you describe would only apply if there were a firm offer from the insurance company. A feeling that you "would have gotten that much anyway" is of no value. Also, you might spoil your chances of getting a better offer by negotiating with the insurance company yourself. They might decide that they are not going to negotiate twice and if you don't accept their offer, but hire an attorney instead, they won't increase the offer, they will withdraw it.

The attorney fee will depend upon the contract between you and your attorney. You could ask an attorney for a contingency contract that only pays a percentage of the recovery above what was previously offered. It is unlikely that my firm would enter into such a contract. The clients we work for value our services and our firm and have no problem paying the prevailing fee for quality representation. If you do not respect and value the time of your attorney enough to pay a customary fee, then you should by all means handle the claim yourself.

Attorney fees are a matter of contract between you and the attorney. The attorney is ethically obligated to charge a fee that is reasonable in the circumstances, but that allows some latitude. The terms and amount of the attorney fee can be negotiated with the attorney and should be reduced to writing so there is no misunderstanding. Having said that, unless your case is unusual in some respect, most attorneys would not take your case for only the increase they may be able to obtain. The time and risk just don't make sense.

I've seen attorneys work it either way. It's a business decision for the attorney, and it really depends on your case. Let's say you've been offered $8,000, but an attorney thinks they recover $15,000 for you. If you settle your case yourself, you walk away with $8,000. If you settle for the $15,000, and the attorney's fee is 1/3, you walk away with $10,000, and the attorney with $5000 (this is still $2000 more than if you settled on your own). Your case may not be worth the risk the attorney takes when he accepts your case to only take a fee on the difference between the 8K and the 15K (1/3 of 7,000, which is $2300). Now if you've only been able to get an offer of $8,000, but the attorney values your case at $100,000, he'll obviously be more prone to taking a fee only on the extra $92,000 he can get for you. The more the attorney thinks they can recover for you, the more likely they are to only charge you a percentage of whatever extra he manages to attain.

The answer to your question depends upon the Contingency Agreement that you and the attorney sign. Most attorneys will take a percentage of the entire settlement.

That is not true. To the contrary, the amount offered before an attorney enters the case is usually insultingly low and very few attorneys knowledgable in this area of law would not charge for all of the proceeds he/she obtains for you.

If an attorney is willing to be paid in that manner, then it would need to be put in the fee agreement and signed by both you and your attorney. But usually it's just a percentage of the gross recovery.

There is no law that says that. It depends on what you negotiate. A lawyer might not want to get involved in your case under those terms. It depends on how much more the lawyer thinks the case is worth, how much work the lawyer foresees,

If you hire an attorney, you would sign a retainer. The retainer would dictate how the attorney gets paid. If you try to negotiate without a lawyer and are not satisfied with how thing are going and then hire an attorney, you may be doing your case a disservice.

Depends on the arrangement you made with the Attorney at the time you hired him or her.

No that is not correct. The terms of how you pay the attorney are completely negotiable between you and the attorney. Most attorneys will charge some amount of fee on the entire settlement. Some will be willing to lower the fee on the amount that you already had been offered by an insurance company but there is no law or regulation requiring them to do so.

You have lost your mind. You are so focused on getting most of the settlement you are forgetting that the size of the settlement is the important thing. All of $1.00 does not compare with one third of $10.00. for example

That is not necessarily true. You would need that issue spelled out in the retainer agreement you sign that the fee is based only on sums over that amount you negotiated. Generally, the retainer agreement, unless modified as above, would base the fee on the total gross settlement. You would want to make sure any prospective attorney you hire would agree to modify the retainer agreement.