How Much Does a Personal Injury Lawyer Take?

Most personal injury lawyers charge on a contingency fee basis, which means your attorney receives compensation valued as a percentage of the money that you get from a favorable decision issued by the judge hearing your case. However, you might come across one of three other payment arrangements when searching for a personal injury lawyer to handle your case.

Contingency Fee

With a contingency fee, if you win a favorable legal judgment or your attorney reaches a settlement with the defendant, you pay your attorney a percentage of the total amount of your compensation. For example, if you win a favorable legal judgment worth $100,000, and your personal injury lawyer charges a 25 percent contingency fee, your net compensation falls to $75,000.

If you choose a litigator who charges a contingency fee, make sure to specify which types of expenses you must pay and what expenses your lawyer must take care of during a case. In addition, choose a contingency fee arrangement that allows you to deduct expenses before the lawyer takes the contingency fee off your compensation. 

Fixed Rate

An attorney charges a flat rate when providing one type of legal service, such as negotiating a settlement with an insurance company. This type of arrangement works well for clients that handle most of the work involved in filing an insurance claim but require legal support for one important task.

Hourly Fee

Hourly legal fees can become an expensive arrangement if your case starts to rack up a considerable number of hours. Personal injury cases are not the best type of cases to pay legal fees on an hourly basis because of the substantial amount of time it takes to resolve these types of cases. If you decide to work with a personal injury lawyer who charges by the hour, ask the attorney to estimate how many hours the lawyer expects to bill you for legal services.

Retainer Fee

Some attorneys prefer to get paid from a fund called a retainer fee. The client puts a down payment on legal services that an attorney draws funds from until the retainer fee balance reaches zero. After a retainer fee balance reaches zero, the lawyer starts charging by the hour for providing legal support.

At Morgan and Morgan, our experienced personal injury attorneys operate on a contingency fee basis, which offers you several advantages. Attorneys who charge on a contingency fee basis have more at stake during a personal injury case because they receive a commission for their efforts. Lawyers who charge by the hour or a fixed rate do not have the financial incentive to put in extra time to achieve a higher value of compensation. A contingency fee arrangement also allows you to avoid paying costly attorney fees until you receive compensation.

Now that you know what to expect with the different types of fee arrangements, as well as understand why a contingency fee is the best option for your case, let’s see how a personal injury lawyer from Morgan and Morgan earns a contingency fee.

Conducts a Thorough Investigation

The most important reason to receive an incident report is to provide your attorney with a starting point to conduct a comprehensive investigation into your case. Whether it comes from a business owner or law enforcement agency, an incident report presents a detailed description of what took place before, during, and after that personal injury incident. Your personal injury lawyer receives a list of witnesses and their contact information, as well as explanations of the types of physical evidence your attorney can expect to review.

At Morgan and Morgan, we assign licensed investigators to work with our highly-rated personal injury attorneys. Our investigators know how to acquire the type of persuasive physical evidence that helps you build a strong insurance claim and if warranted, a civil lawsuit that seeks monetary damages.

Interacts with the Insurance Company

Although filing an insurance claim is not an overly complicated process, it can be a costly process unless you hire an experienced personal injury lawyer. Far too many insurance companies take advantage of policyholders that do not retain legal representation during the claim filing process. If you do not receive legal support, an insurance company might deny a valid claim or approve a claim for a value that is well below the value that you deserve. Hiring an accomplished personal injury lawyer with a proven record of success also helps you monitor the progress of your claim.

Another reason why experience matters when you hire a personal injury lawyer is that an experienced attorney like the ones at Morgan and Morgan develops positive professional relationships with insurance adjusters.

Calculates a Reasonable Value for Compensation

One of the keys to getting an insurance claim approved and winning a favorable legal judgment that awards monetary damages involves calculating a reasonable value for compensation. Although adding up medical bills and the receipts associated with repairing property damage is easy to do, the same cannot be said for calculating a fair value concerning non-economic damages. Pain and suffering, which covers emotional distress issues like acute anxiety, can be a large percentage of the value calculated for compensation. Our attorneys use a formula that factors in the value of economic damages to calculate a reasonable value for the costs associated with pain and suffering.

Negotiates a Settlement

Your personal injury lawyer has two opportunities to negotiate a settlement. The first opportunity involves negotiating with the insurance adjuster processing your claim before it goes to the appeals process. Another opportunity arises during a step in the litigation process called discovery, which allows both parties to exchange evidence and witness statements to determine the strength of their cases.

Negotiations start when your personal injury lawyer submits an initial offer, which the other party can either accept or reject. If the other party rejects the initial offer, your attorney might receive a counteroffer or your case goes to the appeal process for an insurance claim or to the trial phase of the litigation process for the resolution of a civil lawsuit that seeks monetary damages. Several rounds of counteroffers can follow the initial offer until both sides reach an agreement to settle your case or decide to move to the next step of the civil lawsuit or insurance claim process.

Prove Negligence

Your personal injury lawyer must prove the presence of the four elements of negligence to file a personal injury lawsuit. First, your attorney shows the other party owed you a duty of care to protect you from sustaining one or more injuries. Second, the personal injury lawyer handling your case must present convincing evidence that the other party breached the duty of care doctrine. The last two elements of negligence include proving the personal injury incident caused your injuries and that your injuries generated financial losses.

Proving negligence typically leads to a higher financial award approved for a personal injury lawsuit than the compensation you receive from filing an insurance claim.

File a Lawsuit Before the Deadline

Another way your personal injury lawyer earns a contingency fee is to ensure you file a civil lawsuit that seeks monetary damages before the expiration of the statute of limitations. Every state has established a deadline for taking legal action, with a majority of states granting between two and four years for plaintiffs to file a personal injury lawsuit. The clock starts ticking on the statute of limitations on the date of the personal injury incident—unless you sustained injuries that developed delayed symptoms.

If you fail to meet the deadline for filing a personal injury lawsuit, you can expect the court clerk processing your case to dismiss it.

Get the compensation that you deserve by taking the first step of scheduling a free case evaluation today with a personal injury lawyer from Morgan and Morgan.