Signing a fee agreement after a crash? Five things a careful reader checks first

A contingency fee is easy to describe and hard to evaluate. The lawyer takes a percentage of whatever the claim recovers, commonly a third before suit is filed and more once litigation starts, and takes nothing if the claim recovers nothing. That much appears in the first paragraph of most fee agreements. What sits below it, in the paragraphs about case costs, medical liens, and withdrawal, decides how much money actually reaches the person who was hurt. The five checks below are the ones worth making slowly, before signing, with the paper in front of you.

1. What the percentage is actually paying for

A third of a settlement buys a stack of specific work: obtaining the crash report and the other driver's declarations page, requesting records and bills from every treating provider, corresponding with adjusters who do not return calls, calculating what the medical charges will reduce to, negotiating with health insurers and providers who assert liens, and, if negotiation stalls, filing suit before the statute of limitations closes. On a disputed liability claim with contested injuries, that is months of steady work. On a clear rear-end claim with a two-visit treatment history, it is considerably less, and the percentage does not change to reflect it.

2. How case costs are deducted, and in what order

The fee and the costs are separate items, and confusing them is the most common misreading of a settlement statement. Case costs are the out-of-pocket amounts the firm advances: record retrieval charges, filing fees, deposition transcripts, service of process, and expert fees if a physician is asked to write an opinion. Almost every agreement provides that these come back to the firm off the top. The question a careful reader asks is whether the percentage is calculated on the gross recovery or on the recovery after costs are subtracted, because the two produce different numbers on the same settlement.

3. When a flat consultation does the whole job

Many firms will meet for a set fee, or will answer a discrete question without taking the case, and that arrangement fits a specific and fairly common situation: liability is admitted, treatment was brief and finished, the medical bills are documented, and the only real question is whether the offer on the table is within range. An hour with someone who reads these files weekly can confirm whether the adjuster's number accounts for the full billed charges, whether any lien has been overlooked, and whether the release language gives away more than it should. That is advice, not representation, and it is priced accordingly.

4. The claims where the fee exceeds what the lawyer adds

There is a category of claim, small in dollar terms and clean in its facts, where a third is more than the representation is worth to the client. Think of a low-speed collision with a few weeks of physical therapy, undisputed fault, no prior injury to the same body part, and an insurer already offering a figure the medical bills plainly support. A lawyer may still improve that number, but the improvement has to exceed the fee plus the costs before the client is ahead. Asking the firm directly what it expects to add is a fair question, and the honest answers are useful.

5. The clauses people read last and should read first

Three provisions repay attention. The first governs what happens if the client discharges the firm partway through, since some agreements convert to an hourly claim against the eventual recovery. The second sets the litigation percentage and specifies exactly which event triggers the increase, whether filing the complaint, service, or the first mediation. The third states who authorizes settlement, which should always be the client. The Federal Trade Commission oversees how consumer services are advertised nationally, but the fee agreement itself is the document that binds, and it says what it says regardless of what the intake conversation implied.

The comparison worth running is not contingency against hourly in the abstract. It is the specific offer already available, against the realistic settlement range with counsel, minus a third, minus costs the agreement makes recoverable off the top. Ask for that arithmetic in writing before signing. Firms that do this work steadily are used to the question and answer it without difficulty, and the answer tells a claimant which of the three routes actually fits the file in front of them.