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To: Follies who wrote (5159)	6/20/2001 9:31:45 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Dale, everyone thinks that the lawyer takes only winning cases, and it's unfair to get such a large percentage of the award. I wish I was able to take only winning cases. Failing that, I wish every client would pay me whether I won or not. But it doesn't work that way. In a personal injury case, the client doesn't want to pay if they lose, because most of the time they can't afford it. A personal injury case taken to trial and possibly to appeal would cost many thousands of dollars if the client paid by the hour. If you've ever paid a lawyer for litigation, you will know that litigation is not cheap. In a contingency fee case, the lawyer will not get a nickel if she loses the case. That means that every minute spent working on a case which turns out not to be worthwhile is done without compensation. Using myself as an example, I get telephone calls every day from people wanting to know if they have a case. My time spent deciding on whether to pursue a case may be limited to that phone call, or I may meet with the client, do legal research, get copies of their records, do medical research, and so on. I just decided not to pursue a case recently after spending literally hundreds - probably close to a thousand - hours on it. For nada. Such is life. Further, I spend many thousands of dollars on costs, e.g., copy costs, expert witness fees, filing fees, service fees, deposition fees, which I am allowed by law to advance for the client. The client is supposed to pay me back whether I win or lose, but most of the time they don't. We're talking about people who have been seriously injured and may be disabled or unable to work full time, so even if the only out of pocket expense I have is a copy of their medical records that's going to be a few hundred dollars and they aren't likely to have a few extra hundred dollars. I send them the bills but I am not surprised when they don't pay, and I don't sue my own clients. So there are three potential solutions to the problem of paying the lawyer - 1) if the client can't pay, the client isn't allowed to proceed with the case - thus, only rich people get justice; 2) the client pays nothing but if the lawyer wins, the lawyer gets paid extra for taking the risk of losing; the lawyer keeps track of her hours and the loser pays - tough on the injured person if she has to pay the insurance defense lawyers - those guys travel in packs.-ng- I always give clients the choice of paying me by the hour whether I win or lose, or paying me the contingency fee if I win. I explain that I may make a lot more on the contingency fee, but I may make less - they always pick the contingency fee. That means that I work really, really hard, because I want to win, need to win. In a slam dunk case, it is not at all unusual for the client to negotiate a better fee structure. There are some cases in which the negligence is so clear-cut that it takes very little for the lawyer to obtain compensation, simply by a few letters and phone calls, e.g., the doctor cut off the wrong leg - in a case like that, clients typically negotiate with the lawyer to take much less. I think an ethical lawyer would suggest that to the client to begin with, but that's because I've seen it done - when I was a law clerk, I worked on a case involving a Jones Act seaman who got the lawyer to agree to 10% on a slam dunk case. The doctor, of course, gets paid whether he kills the patient or cures the patient. Doctors don't work on contingency fees.