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Hi guys, this is Matt. We're going into section three, legal fees. This is the big one that everyone wants to hear about, but this is part three of going over my contract with my clients. All right guys, part three legal fees. This is what everyone wants to know. How much is my lawyer going to cost me? Well, the good news is that it doesn't cost you anything upfront. If the lawyer doesn't get you any money, then you don't know anything. The lawyer just worked for free. So let's go ahead and read this, because this is very important. Legal fees are payment for attorney's time spent fighting on your case, and so I like to joke about parts and labor. The legal fees are the labor. If you took your car into a mechanic, the mechanic is going to charge you for his time. That's their labor. They may also charge you for parts. Those are the costs. That's going to be section four in my contract, but part three, this is for the lawyers time.

Should no settlement or award be achieved in this action, then the client has no duty to pay any legal fees. Let me say that one more time. Should no money be got for you, you don't pay anything. You know, we can't guarantee much in litigation, but that's a pretty strong guarantee for you. However, let's go ahead and read on it is agreed that the total attorney fee will be 40% of the gross amount of recovery. If the case is settled after a lawsuit is filed. If the case is settled before filing a lawsuit, the total attorney fee will be a third of the gross amount. Client agrees to the above fee after having been advised that the fee is not set by law. 

So let me hit two things that are important there. First and most important, it's from the gross amount. So folks will say, Hey, you're going to take your percentage after we pay my medical bills, right? No. Hey, we're going to take the attorney fee, but your litigation costs are going to come out of the lawyers percentage? No, that's not how this works. The lawyer is taking the risk on your case. The lawyer is taking a gamble. In fact, I have a separate video. You should check it out. In fact, I'll try to link it here, about why are lawyers so expensive? So please stop, go watch that video. But the percentage is from the gross amount. The second thing here is whether or not we file a lawsuit. Some smaller cases, usually they're auto crash cases. If the injuries are relatively minor, you know, we can work out a settlement or we can try to work out a settlement with the defendant. If that's the case, I only charge a third. However, if we do need to file a lawsuit that bumps up to 40% because it's going to take about a year longer, maybe a year or two years, and there's a lot of extra work. 

The last thing to highlight here is that these are simply my fees. They're very common fact. They're so common, the third and 40%, that many people think that those percentages are actually set by law. Now, that's not the case. Those are just my firm's prices, but I do need to advise you in writing that those fees are not set by law. We don't want anybody to be confused or think that the law says that. That's what lawyers charge. 

Alright guys, the next thing I want to go over when we're talking about legal fees is what I call the promise. I promise as your lawyer to fight for you to do everything necessary to win your case. I'll take the case to trial if we need to and I'll do all the work, no matter how hard it is and no many how many hours it's going to take. That's the beauty of a contingency fee is that I'm not going to send you an invoice every month. I'm not going to ticky tack little hours and charge ya 0.1 hour for a phone call. I'm just going to do all the work necessary. It would not be fair to you if I finished the case and said, Hey Susie, we won your case, but I had to work extra hard on this one. You know, it's just, I feel like I had to spend a lot of hours on it. It was harder than I thought it was going to be and we got a fantastic result.

I got you way more money than we thought we were ever going to get you. So I think in your case, I'm actually going to increase my fee to 50% because I just think that's fair. I would never do that. That, that not only would that be breaking our contract, it'd be unethical and it's just not fair. It's not right. And so by the same token, I always ask my clients, do you promise that at no point in time, especially during settlement negotiations or during trial, will you try to lower the lawyer's fee or renegotiate the fee? And if you have any doubt in your mind about this promise about not renegotiating the fee, do not sign this contract. Try to find another lawyer. Because if we move forward from this point, we're trusting each other, that's the only way this is going to work. 

And actually there is some case law and some state bar ethics decisions out there that show that once you start to haggle with your own lawyer, you have just created a conflict of interest. You and your own lawyer are now adversaries if you're trying to negotiate with your lawyer halfway through your case. So if you have a conflict of interest, I can't, I can't represent you. So if you start haggling over the lawyer's fee, the lawyer's going to have to withdraw from representation and you're going to have to get a whole new lawyer. So that's why this promise is so important.