How much does a personal injury lawyer take?

The share written in your retainer, applied to what is recovered, and nothing under a contingency agreement if nothing is recovered. We publish no customary percentage, because we hold no source that measured one. This site's calculator uses a 33.3% contingency rate as a stand-in, and the worked example above shows what it takes from a settlement; your own agreement, and whether it applies the rate before or after costs, decides your case.

What is a typical personal injury attorney fee?

A contingency agreement can set one percentage before a lawsuit is filed and a higher one after. We do not publish customary figures, because we hold no source record for them. The rate that governs your case is the one written in your retainer, and you can ask about it before you sign. A state can cap contingency fees by statute or court rule, for example in medical malpractice cases, so ask whether yours does.

Do I owe my attorney anything if we lose?

Under a contingency fee agreement you owe no attorney's fee if there is no recovery, because the fee is a share of a recovery that did not happen. You may still owe case costs, meaning filing fees, expert witnesses, and deposition transcripts, depending on what your agreement says. An agreement can have the firm absorb costs in a loss, or require reimbursement either way. That clause is worth reading twice.

What are case costs and who pays them?

Case costs are the out-of-pocket expenses of building the claim: court filing fees, service of process, expert witness fees, deposition transcripts, medical records retrieval, accident reconstruction, and investigation. They are separate from the attorney's fee. An agreement can have the firm advance them and deduct them from the settlement proceeds at distribution. How large they get turns on the experts the case needs.

What is medical subrogation?

Medical subrogation is the right of a health insurer to be reimbursed out of your settlement for medical bills it paid on your behalf. If your health plan paid for your treatment and you then recover from the at-fault party, the plan can assert a claim against those proceeds, and your attorney can negotiate the amount. Medicare and Medicaid claims run under federal rules, so ask how they will be resolved before the settlement is distributed.

Are attorney fees negotiable?

The time to ask is before you sign. A firm can weigh the risk it takes on, such as how clear liability is and how well the damages are documented, when it sets a rate. Ask about the handling of case costs too: who carries them if there is no recovery, and whether they come out before or after the fee is calculated. Never sign a retainer you have not read closely enough to ask a question about.

How Personal Injury Attorney Fees Work

A personal injury attorney can work on contingency, which means you pay nothing upfront and the fee is a share of what is recovered. If there is no recovery, there is no fee under that arrangement.

The fee is not the only thing that comes out of a settlement before the money reaches you. It is one deduction of three, and understanding all three is the difference between evaluating an offer and guessing at one.

What a contingency fee is

A contingency fee is a payment arrangement where the attorney is paid a percentage of what they recover for you, and nothing if they recover nothing. Instead of billing by the hour, the firm carries the case financially and is paid at the end, out of the result.

The structure means being injured and being able to afford a lawyer need not be the same question. Litigation costs money well before anyone is paid: expert witnesses, filing fees, depositions, and records retrieval all have to be funded while the case is still open, and under a contingency agreement the firm can fund them.

A distinction to read for in a retainer: no fee if you lose does not automatically mean no cost if you lose. Case expenses are a separate category, and an agreement can require them to be reimbursed regardless of outcome. Confirm how yours handles that before you sign, not after.

What percentage should you expect?

A contingency agreement can be written as a percentage that steps up if a lawsuit has to be filed, and again if the case is tried. We do not publish a table of customary steps. We hold no source that measured them, and a number we cannot show you the origin of is a number we will not put in front of you.

The one percentage we can account for is our own. This calculator applies a fixed contingency rate to the gross recovery when it estimates your net, and the worked example further down names that rate and shows exactly what it produces. Your retainer governs your case, not our default, so read the percentage in your own agreement and read what it applies to.

Ask about the rate before you sign, and ask about the handling of costs too: who carries them if there is no recovery, and whether they come out before or after the fee is calculated. On a large settlement, that second question can change the arithmetic by a meaningful amount, and the worked example below shows why.

Case costs are not the fee

Case costs are real out-of-pocket expenses incurred while building the claim, and they are deducted separately from the attorney's percentage. They can include court filing fees, service of process, medical records retrieval, deposition transcripts, expert witness fees, accident reconstruction, and investigation.

How large they get turns on the experts the case needs. A claim resolved on the strength of the medical records alone can need no paid reports at all. A claim that turns on causation, on future care, or on how a collision actually happened can need people who are paid for their time and their reports, and those costs come out of your gross settlement before your net is calculated.

Your retainer should say whether costs are deducted before or after the percentage is applied. Ask your attorney to walk you through the arithmetic on a hypothetical number early, so the distribution sheet at the end contains nothing you have not already seen.

Medical liens: the third deduction

A medical lien is a claim against your settlement by someone who paid for your treatment. Three kinds to ask about: private health insurer subrogation, Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, and direct provider or hospital liens.

A health insurer that covered your medical bills can have a contractual or a statutory right to be reimbursed out of your injury recovery. Your attorney can notify each lienholder of the settlement and negotiate the amount. Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement runs under federal rules, which this guide does not quote, so ask your attorney how they apply to your claim.

Ask early who will negotiate the liens and how. A lien nobody negotiated can take a substantial bite out of what would otherwise have been your net check, and it is easy to overlook until the distribution sheet arrives.

What the distribution actually looks like

Understanding your net recovery matters more than understanding the headline number, because the net is the only figure that reaches you. Here is a full distribution, run through this site's own settlement engine rather than typed out by hand:

Gross settlement: $146,875
Attorney fee (33.3%): - $48,909
Case costs (5.5% of the gross): - $8,078
Medical liens (12% of past medical bills): - $2,640
Net to client: $87,248

Run through our own calculator: fracture with surgery, several months of recovery, in Arizona, with no share of fault assigned to the claimant. The fee is applied to the gross, the method this calculator uses. Your own percentages come from your retainer, so put them in the calculator and the bottom line moves.

Gross method or net method

There are two ways a retainer can calculate the fee. Under the gross method, the percentage applies to the whole settlement before costs come out. Under the net method, costs come out first and the percentage applies to what is left. At the same percentage, the net method produces a smaller fee, and the difference grows with the size of the cost bill.

The gross method is the one this calculator applies, which is why the table above deducts the fee from the gross rather than from the remainder. Ask which method your agreement uses. It is a single sentence in the retainer and it can be worth a meaningful amount of money.

Is hiring an attorney worth the fee?

We do not publish a multiple of what claimants with and without attorneys recover, because we hold no source record for one, and we will not repeat a number we cannot show you the origin of.

What an attorney demonstrably changes is narrower and easier to verify: what gets documented, whether every available coverage source is identified, how the demand is packaged, and whether the insurer prices in the risk of litigation. Weigh that against the contingency fee, which comes off the top.

For a very minor claim, meaning minimal treatment, clear liability, and a fast full recovery, handling it yourself may be the right call. For a case involving hospitalization, ongoing treatment, lost wages, or disputed liability, the calculation is different, and it is worth talking to a lawyer before you decide.