Attorney Fees

Most personal injury lawyers do not charge any upfront or ongoing fees for their representation. Rather, personal injury lawyers work under a “contingency contract” that sets their fee as a portion of the amount they recover on behalf of their client. In other words, your attorney is paid a percentage of what they win for you. Importantly, because the fee is based on a recovery, personal injury lawyers only get paid when they win. If, for whatever, the personal injury lawyer cannot recover – they do not earn a fee.

The most common attorney fee has been 33 1/3% of the total recovery. For example, if your lawyer, who charges a 33%, fee, recovers $100,000 for medical bills, pain and suffering and lost wages, their fee will be 33% of the full $100,000, or, In other words, their fee would be $33,000. It is also common to have a shifting contingency based on the amount of litigation needed. For example, a contingency contract may charge 33 1/3% as an attorney fee if the case resolves without having to file a lawsuit but increase the fee to 40% if a lawsuit is filed. Some firms will even charge 45% if they need to file an appeal.

Despite there being more personal injury lawyers for you to chose from, fees have only grown. Now, many large personal injury law firms charge anywhere from 36% to over 40%. Some of these firms also charge “retainers” in addition to their contingency amount. Historically, retainers were charged upfront by attorneys who bill by the hour to ensure their clients had sufficient funds to cover their legal bills. However, now many large personal injury law firms now collect retainer fees at the end of the case in addition to their contingency fee percentage. This is just another way of generating profit for the firm.

Malvin Law Fee Transparency:

At Malvin Law, we aren’t afraid to post our fees:

Pre-litigation settlement (recovery before going to court) : 33 ⅓ % (90% of our cases resolve at this stage)

Litigation (court required): 40%

Workers’ Compensation: 20% (in accordance with La. R.S. 23:1441(B)).

Case Costs

In addition to an attorney fee, personal injury lawyers typically recover the expenses paid by the firm while fighting your case. There will be expenses in nearly every personal injury case. For example, it is common for attorneys to pay for police reports, medical records, employment records, tax transcripts, military histories, background checks, skip-tracing, insurance coverage verification, driving histories, court expenses, expert fees, etc. However, it is important to remember that most personal injury attorneys will not ask their clients to pay case costs if they lose. Most personal injury lawyers will write-off their expenses in the event they do not win.

Case costs are deducted from the gross recovered amount after the attorney fee is calculated. For example, if your personal injury attorney, who charges $33%, recovered $100,000 but spent $7,000 in expenses, the calculations would look like this:

Like all other personal injury firms, Malvin Law recoups expenses paid in pursuing your claim. However, Malvin Law does not charge interest or mark-up on case costs. You pay what we pay.

Malvin Law Recovery Assurance

We believe that our clients deserve to receive the lion’s share of their injury settlement because, well, they were the ones injured. Therefore, we work to reduce our fee to ensure that our clients take home more than we do. How much more? 1.5X more than our attorney fee.

What does this look like? Let’s say we win a $15,000 settlement but a medical provider has asserted a lien legally requiring us to pay them $7,500 from the settlement. This would typically look like this:

However, with Malvin Law Recovery Assurance, we’d reduce our fee your settlement would look like this:

While there are a few exceptions to this program, our goal is always to put the most in your pocket.