Is There an Initial Fee for Engaging a Personal Injury Lawyer’s Services?

Absolutely not.  You shouldn’t if anyone asks you to do that, you should run away. There’s a problem if a lawyer takes a percentage of your recovery and also asks you to pay for things like experts, medical care, or court costs. That does not fit with the contingence fee agreement which is what we’re talking about. A fee in which the lawyer recovers a percentage of the recovery contingent on the outcome of the case. If you win the lawyer wins, if you lose the lawyer loses. So you should never ever have to advance a penny on your case and I would add one other thing and one other word of caution. Many many lawyers in the injury business and the ones that are not as substantial, have not been as successful as we have will ask you to sign notes or promissory notes or loan documents so that the lawyer can then borrow money against your case from third parties, sometimes a bank sometimes a finance company and when the lawyer does that he is putting you on that note and you will have an obligation to repay those costs if the lawyer is not successful what’s more is you will be charged an interest rate and often times a very very high interest rate for that type of financing. So if you are asked by a personal injury lawyer to sign a promissory note, or a loan agreement, or anything of that nature think twice before you do it, you shouldn’t have to do it, we don’t do it in our world and I don’t believe it’s consistent with the contingence fee agreement in paying a third or a 40% fee to ask a client to take on the responsibility of a loan to finance the case.

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