Legal Contingency Fees Impossible To Pay For Poor Clients

One bill a 60 year old lady has been paying each month is a lawyers fee

, and she's been paying it for four years now. She filed a claim with the state compensation fund office and the attorney helped her win her case to receive a $101 monthly disability payment. In the same state, a disabled miner has been paying his lawyer a monthly fee for over ten years now. The miner won a $134 monthly pension, and his lawyer is still getting paid each month.

These cases, though very common, show how legal fees are hard on the poor. In one case, a woman and her husband were receiving welfare. He was bedridden because of his cancer. The real problem of legal fees isn't only one that applies to the poor. Middle class bank accounts are robbed, too.

One book about lawyers states that the American middle class is the hardest hit by lawyers fees because they not only have the money, they also have no power when it comes to state legislatures. What's crazy about this fact is the middle class also produces most of our lawyers, which the author states should be subject to psychoanalytic interpretations.

Generally, lawyers fees are charged by the hour. One lawyer who concentrates on compensation cases argues that doctors and plumbers are paid on an hourly basis, so why shouldn't attorneys be paid hourly? No one would argue that lawyers work for free. But, how long is it ethical to charge a percentage of an award? Lifetime payments from clients are not unusual for divorces, injury suits, will probates and real estate investment.

Money has been stolen from the accounts of children and widows whose money was entrusted to attorneys to keep safe for when they need it. Charging far more money than necessary, some lawyers don't actually steal the money. They get it through their fees. A lawyer and his partner took nearly 60 percent of a six-figure estate for legal fees in just five years. Having been ruled incompetent by the court, the owner of the estate did not manage his own affairs. The good news in this case was that the lawyers were made to pay back the money they had taken. The lawyer who brought the case against them was considered eccentric by his peers. Other lawyers refused to get near the case.

Newspapers and other media outlets also make this problem bigger because they only use the court systems as a source of content. The media usually will not report what the lawyers are getting paid for the case, even though this information is readily available for them to see. The bar association also has something to do with this problem. They don't want any changes made to the relationship between client and lawyer. They do not hesitate to slap down any negative attitude toward the legal profession, should it be called out in the media.

Most of the time the lawyers will only accept the percentage arrangement, even though their fees are based on hours spend on the case. One lawyer is an ardent proponent of set minimum fee agreements. Another term for the percentage agreement is contingent fee, and the lawyer will gain a certain percent of the total compensation if the case is won. For personal injury and accident cases, these fees can range from 25 percent to 50 percent of the award amount.

Just like poker, Americans invented the contingent fee. Europeans are not fans of contingency fees, and won't allow them. The reason the US accepted the contingent fee was due to the amount of workers who were injured on the job. They didn't have any money to file a civil suit, so the contingency fee solved the problem.

by: wainrs

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