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Lawyers help clients with all sorts of legal questions. Most lawyers specialize in a given area of the law. Their fees reflect the nature of their specialty.
A consultation fee: Not all lawyers charge a consultation fee. The typical personal injury attorney does not charge such a fee.
An hourly rate: Client must pay for the number of hours that the hired lawyer spent on the client’s case. The lawyer’s years of experience can affect the amount of time devoted to a particular problem. By the same token, the nature of a given task can affect the amount of time required, in order to finish that same task.
Flat fees: These are used when a Personal Injury Lawyer in Stouffville must carry-out one or more uncomplicated tasks.
Statutory fee: This is set by law.
Asset-based fees: The size for each of these fees gets determined by the amount of money that changes hands during the course of whatever transaction takes place under the lawyer’s guidance and supervision.
Contingency fee: This is the type of fee used by most personal injury lawyers. The fee’s size reflects the amount of money that the client has received from the lawsuit. The client agrees to provide the hired attorney with a given percent of the awarded money. Most personal injury lawyers accept roughly 30% of the award money.
In addition to agreeing on the percent given to the hired lawyer, the client should know how the payment of expenses will get handled. Will the money to cover the expenses get taken from the client’s award, or will that expense money be requested after the client has received the awarded funds?
What happens if the client fails to win any sort of award? In that case, the hired attorney does not receive a single cent. That is one of the chief benefits offered to clients that agree to hire a personal injury lawyer.
In other words, the lawyer’s time might not be paid for, if the client fails to win any money. Of course, the client also goes without any compensation. Hence, the client has not been able to get back to the point where he or she was before the injury-causing accident. That fact underscores the reason for introduction of yet another fee-associated topic.
There are times when a lawyer’s reluctance to take a case to court can hurt the client. That reluctance can lead to acceptance of a rather small compensation. The size of that compensation might fall well below the actual losses that have been, or may later be endured by the client, the one that suffered the accident-caused injury. That is a risk associated with hiring someone that agrees to charge a contingency fee.