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One of the things that have to be taken into thorough consideration when discussing the fees of an attorney would be the way they are calculated. The field of personal injury law is rather specific and this has to be accounted for. With this being said, the regular attorney practicing in this particular field is going to be working under the so called contingency fee. This means that you, as a client, don’t pay a dime unless the case is settled in a favorable for you manner or is won in court. This means that the lawyer is going to undertake all of the risk which is associated with losing the case in return to an average of between 33% and 40% of the winning compensation. This is regularly pretty favorable for the attorney but there is still room for negotiating, contrary to what you might believe. Let’s see how you may get that chunk reduced.
You’ve done some of the work
The terms under which you can file your claim are rather extensive and with this in mind, it’s quite possible that some significant amount of time might have passed after the accident. During this time you may have gathered all of the necessary documents that are pertaining to a case and present them to the attorney for revision and appraisal. This is going to save him a considerable amount of work and you can use this as grounds for your negotiations.
The event of a settlement
The majority of personal injury cases are settled long before they even reach the courtroom. This is done through out of the court negotiations and a legal settlement which has the same binding and enforceable weight as a verdict. With this in mind, you can agree on a lesser amount of money if a favorable for you settlement has been reached. This is mainly due to the fact that the attorney wouldn’t have to spend more time on the settlement and that the work is also substantially less. However, you will need to ensure that the lawyer is on the same page about these aspects.
Establish limits
This is another technique that you could go for. For instance, you could establish financial boundaries that are going to determine the amount of the lawyer fee. Say, the compensation ranges between $5,000 and $10,000 – the attorney gets 25%. If it’s between $10,000 and $15,000 – he gets 30% and so on and so forth. This is a reasonable negotiating tool as it’s going to be fair for you and for the lawyer as it’s going to provide him with an incentive to pursuit higher compensations and he’s supposedly going to do a better job. As you can see, there are quite a few things that you could do in order to negotiate a reduced fee. It is good that you discuss all aspects of the legal fee before beginning the negotiations with the defendant.