One reader's working-through of a bodily injury claim, from the first adjuster call to the signed release, with the arithmetic that nobody volunteers. No advice for any particular case, and no substitute for a lawyer reading your file.
The percentage is the part everyone looks at, and it is rarely the part that decides how much money reaches the client. A contingency agreement is usually two or three pages, written to be readable, and the clauses that move the most money are the ones describing what happens to case expenses, what happens when a lawsuit is filed, and what happens if the client leaves partway through. A careful reader goes through it with a pen, marks the arithmetic clauses, and asks for a worked example on a hypothetical number before signing anything.
What the percentage is actually buying
The standard arrangement is that the firm takes no fee unless money comes in, which means the firm is financing the case and absorbing the risk that it produces nothing. In exchange the fee is a share of the recovery rather than an hourly rate. What that share buys, in practice, is someone who collects the records and bills, who reads the property damage estimate against the medical narrative, who knows what the carrier's software does with soft tissue diagnoses, and who can make the threat of filing credible. It also buys someone to argue the liens down at the end, which is frequently where the client's net actually improves.
The percentage itself is conventional rather than fixed. Many firms start around a third of the gross recovery on a claim resolved before suit, and a written agreement should state that number plainly, along with whether it applies to the total settlement or to some other base. Some states cap contingency fees in particular categories of case, and some require the client's written consent to any increase. The question worth asking directly is whether the rate is negotiable at all, because on a clean liability case with a large policy behind it, sometimes it is.
The step-up, and what triggers it
Almost every agreement contains a tier: one rate before a lawsuit is filed, a higher one after, and sometimes a third after an appeal is docketed or a trial date is reached. The increase reflects real additional work, since filing converts a negotiation into a litigation calendar with depositions, written discovery, expert disclosures, and motions. What a careful reader checks is the trigger language. Does the higher rate attach when the complaint is filed, when the defendant answers, or when a mediation date passes? And does it apply to the whole recovery, or only to the amount above whatever was last offered before suit?
That second question matters more than it sounds. An agreement that steps the rate up on the entire settlement creates a moment where filing suit has to produce a meaningfully larger number just to keep the client even. Most firms will explain the reasoning without being defensive, and some will write in a provision that the pre-suit rate survives if the case settles within a set window after filing. Asking for that provision costs nothing, and the answer tells the reader something about how the firm thinks about the client's net rather than its own gross.
Costs are separate, and the order of operations decides how much
Case expenses are not the fee. Filing fees, service of process, deposition transcripts, medical records charges, accident reconstruction, treating physician narrative fees, expert retainers, mediator fees, and postage all get advanced by the firm and reimbursed out of the recovery. The agreement should say whether the client owes them if the case loses, and many agreements say the client does, in which case that clause deserves a slow second reading. It should also say whether the firm charges interest on advanced costs, which some do and most do not.
Then the sequence. If the fee is calculated on the gross settlement and costs come out afterward, the client pays a fee on money that was never theirs to keep. If costs are deducted first and the fee is calculated on the remainder, the client's net is higher, and on a case with heavy expert expenses the difference runs into thousands. The agreement will specify one or the other. Ask for the settlement statement in advance, on a round number, showing gross, fee, costs, liens, and net. A firm that produces one readily is showing you exactly how it will handle the end of the case.
The clauses that surface later
Two more deserve attention. First, what happens if the client discharges the firm midway: most agreements convert to a claim for the reasonable value of work performed, asserted as a lien against any later recovery, and the language should be specific. Second, how the firm handles a structured settlement or an annuity, since a fee taken on the full present value of future payments is a different calculation than one taken on cash received. The Internal Revenue Service is responsible for how settlement proceeds are characterized for tax purposes, and that treatment can interact with how the fee is stated, which is a conversation worth having before the case resolves rather than in March.
A fee agreement is the one document in the case the client controls entirely, because nothing has been signed and nothing has been filed. Read it in a chair, not at a desk with someone waiting.