contingency fee

The venerable and yet vulnerable contingency fee is in the spotlight at the Minnesota Supreme Court, courtesy of the Faricy law firm, which claims one-third of a settlement reached a few months after it was fired by its client.

Applying a multiplier to contingency fee lodestar awards is not limited to "rare" and "exceptional" circumstances, the Florida Supreme Court has ruled.

Haas and others question whether the true purpose of the contingency fee cap is to reduce legal fees and put more money in the hands of clients.

The contingency fee method is typically only used if you are suing someone else.

In response, CalCPA worked with other stakeholders to write a letter of concern to GO-Biz stating that the proposed language pertaining to contingency fee arrangements is incalculable and may adversely impact the program's goal of fostering fair competition, especially in relation to small businesses.

Attorneys who take cases on a contingency fee basis most often rely upon this practice.

Proponents often assert that allowing lawyers to enter into contingency fee agreements would provide potential litigants with an additional source of funding and, in doing so, promote access to justice for persons otherwise unable to afford legal representation.

In an ideal world one could directly test assertions about promotional activity's effect on contingency fees. One could, for instance, compile copious data from a representative group of PI specialists and specify a regression model, regressing fees (whether by contingency fee percentage charged or effective hourly rate realized (192)) on an indicator variable set to one if the firm advertised and zero otherwise along with a range of independent variables that theory and evidence suggest will impact fees or are logically necessary controls, including firm size, attorney experience, subspecialties within PI, and so forth.

For example, the Institute explained that taxpayers use contingency fee arrangements to expand the resources available for identifying whether new or existing projects qualify for the incentive and, as important, to determine whether a taxpayer's business processes properly document the qualification of its projects.

ACA and other industry groups are asking the nation's highest court to hear a former paint manufacturer's challenge to a California Supreme Court ruling allowing local governments to retain contingency fee counsel to prosecute public nuisance cases.