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I received a contract from a personal injury attorney. It states that he will receive 40%, and that expenses (even his) will come out of my portion. There’s no cap on his “expenses” so how can I protect my 60% from being eaten up? I see no point in wasting time pursuing a case that gains me little or nothing.
BTW this is about the Jif Peanut Butter/Salmonella thing, which I assume will be a class action suite.
Can I request a contract stating the limit of expenses? And if they say no…..run the other way!
You are going to run into the 60/40 thing with any attorney you contact. Most PI lawyers do this. The only way is to pay off the attorney or pay as much to the attorney out of your own pocket as you can. You could also offer to do mundane things such as copying, faxing, and phone calls yourself if you want to. But you have to keep track of everything by the minute.
The Bush administration was supposed to put an end to lawyers getting paid so much in these cases, but it didn’t happen. And believe me, the payout isn’t much in them, either. If you go class action, you get less.
You can demand a regular record of expenses as the above answerers said. You can also try to negotiate a lower fee. Ask for 70/30 and accept 65/35. The worst he can say is no. You can also walk away and get another attorney. First you should see if anyone is willing to take your deal. This fee arrangement is quite typical. Maybe you can work out the costs of certain expenses: for examply photocopying should be a maximum of 15 cents a copy (or some other rate reasonable in your area) and perhaps you can get him to agree that if mailing costs or courier charges are higher because of his failure, he pays for the difference. It’s worth a shot and might be worth some real money to you in the end.
a few years back i was involved in a product liability case as a plaintiff and i ask for updates on the on going expences involved in the case….fed-ex bills, travel ect…please understand you hired them they work for you. i did settled and as a result there we no “surprise” expenses at the end.
you have every right to ask for updates…exercise that right….
dont hire one.
Stacey P is correct
Demand regular invoices or billing statements – no more than 2 weeks apart.
Add in that you MUST approve any expense over $xxx (whatever you feel is appropriate).
Put in language that you can terminate the representation if, in your sole opinion, the expenses have become too much – AND, if you terminate, the attorney gets ONLY a percent of whatever your new lawyer recovers (sometimes PI lawyers say that, if you terminate, they get paid as if they had been retained hourly).