Vlog: The Gamble

Ever wonder why Lawyers are so expensive?

In this weeks video blog we will be looking at The Gamble that lawyers risk in order to take your case, and why it costs so much.

Hi guys, Matt Clendenin here with the Clendenin Firm, I want to talk about settlements today. In particular I want to talk about where all the settlement money goes. The first thing that we go over with a client, when we get a settlement offer or even when we make a settlement offer is how much of that settlement is going to be going to the client. Because of course everyone's asking how much money am I going to get? The client usually doesn't really care at first about how much money the lawyer gets or how much money the medical bills costs. The client wants to know what goes in their pocket. So it's important to talk about this. So the client really understands what's happening with the settlement. And of course, the second question that everyone asks is, why are lawyers so expensive?

So a great question and I'll start with a disclaimer, which is that lawyers are expensive. Unfortunately, lawyers just like doctors go to school for a long, long time and it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars in education to be able to do what lawyers do. So lawyers are expensive, but for personal injury trial lawyers, I like to tell people about the gamble. What I'm talking about when I say the gamble is when you first meet with your personal injury lawyer, that lawyer is committing to gamble their time and their money to fight and hopefully win your case. So the risk is all on the lawyer. So when I talked about the gamble, I like to put the shoe on the other foot, so to speak. And I like to tell the client, let's put it this way. You know, Mr. Smith, thank you for coming in today. I'm glad you've told me a little bit about your case.

I'd love to work on your case. I want to get started, but I gotta tell ya, it's going to take me several hundred hours of work and I charge $300 an hour. So I'm going to need to ask you to pay for 20 hours up front, and I'm going to send you an invoice for about 15 or $20,000 every month while we're working on this case. Oh, and by the way, Mr. Smith, it's also going to cost us about $40,000 of lawsuit costs in addition to paying for my time. We're going to have to pay a lot of court fees. We're going to have to pay. The experts going to have to pay your doctors. There's lots of depositions we need to take. So Mr. Smith, I'm going to need you to also pay me a down payment of $40,000 to pay for the costs on your case. And look, Mr. Smith, before you write me a check, I want to make sure that you understand we might not win your case. You might pay all this money and we might get you zero. And even if we do win, I can't promise you how much money we're going to win. It's really, entirely risky.

Who in the world is going to do that? You know, unfortunately, most people can't afford to do that even if they wanted to make that gamble. So when you're sitting at the beginning of your case, it's important to keep in mind that it's the lawyer who's bearing all that risk. It's the lawyer who's gambling on your case. So then two years later, after two years of work and we win the case, I hope that gives a little bit of perspective for why the lawyer takes that big percentage. At the end of the day.