If you or somebody you love has sustained an injury as a result of the negligence of another individual or entity in Pennsylvania, you may need to work with an attorney to recover full compensation for your losses. However, we know that most people do not deal with lawyers on a regular basis, and understanding how to afford one can be challenging. Here, we want to discuss a contingency fee arrangement that your attorney may allow so you can proceed forward with your claim in an affordable manner.
Affording Legal Assistance – The Costs of Your Case
Affording an attorney can seem daunting. The reality is that no professional service comes free, including assistance from a lawyer. First, we want to review some of the costs associated with most personal injury claims:
- An attorney’s fees
- The cost of filing the court case
- Researching time
- Time and expense to copy documents
- Expert witness fees
- Administrative fees
- Various miscellaneous expenses
The total costs of a personal injury case will vary depending on the overall complexity of the claim itself. For relatively simple cases that revolve around minor injuries, the costs may reach a few thousand dollars. However, for anything more than a minor case, the total legal fees can rise into the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. That does not mean that pursuing a personal injury claim is cost-prohibitive for you.
How a Contingency Fee Works
One of the most common ways that attorneys work with individuals when it comes to fees is by establishing a contingency-based payment plan. Under this type of system, an attorney will handle all of the up-front and out-of-pocket costs for the case, and the injured individual will owe nothing unless the attorney successfully recovers the compensation they need through an insurance settlement or personal injury jury verdict. Basically, payment of legal fees is “contingent” on the attorney’s success with the case. If the attorney does not win the case, the client pays nothing.
The contingency fee will be agreed upon before the attorney begins work on the case. Typically, the contingency rate ends up being between 30% to 35% of the overall recovery. For example, if an attorney recovers $1 million on behalf of a client who sustains a traumatic brain injury caused by another party, and if the contingency fee arrangement was 30%, then the attorney would receive $300,000 in total.
We know that this may seem like a large amount of money, but the reality is that most individuals end up recovering more compensation than they would otherwise have received by handling the case themselves, even after accounting for the contingency fee coming out of the total.
Talk to Your Lawyer
When you work with an injury lawyer in Philadelphia, you need to make sure that you understand the costs associated with your case. Additionally, we want you to know that the “cost” of not having an attorney by your side for your personal injury claim could end up being extreme, including losing your case altogether. Individuals who lack much legal experience should not have to go up against well-funded insurance carriers and legal teams by themselves. The contingency fee arrangement helps even the playing field between injury victims and those who allegedly caused the injury.