As a Personal injury / slip and fall attorney in Rockville, Maryland, I can walk you through this answer… It is because it is what is called a “contingent” case, meaning you are not paying the attorney up front but only pay the attorney fee if the attorney is successful in the case.
To begin with, personal injury cases are very different than most other types of cases for which people hire lawyers. In a personal injury case, such as a slip and fall, or car accident, or medical malpractice case, an attorney only gets paid if he wins at trial or settles your case. Unlike a divorce attorney, a criminal defense lawyer, a business lawyer or most other types of lawyers you do not personally pay the lawyer up front. So, you are not giving a personal injury lawyer $5,000 or $10,000 to be billed at $300 or $500 an hour. Also, it is the personal injury lawyer who puts up the funds to get the case through trial. Typically, in a personal injury manner the client pays nothing up front which is entirely different from almost any other type of attorney client situation. Ideally, a personal injury lawyer will believe in you and your case before they take it on because of the financial commitment they are taking on just in order to have the chance to win. Let’s look at a hypothetical case to see why this contingency fee structure makes sense.
Case:
John Smith slips and falls on ice leaving a grocery store and breaks his leg. John then hires the Law Office of David Wasser represent him. Mr. Wasser then pays a property management expert $4,000 to examine why the ice was there and why it shouldn’t have been, and how the Grocery store could have reasonably maintained their property to prevent the fall, and to testify in court if necessary. Next, Mr. Wasser pays a doctor $5,000 to examine John Smith’s medical history, does a physical exam and to testify, if necessary, that there wasn’t an underlying condition or previous injury that made Mr. Smith more susceptible to falling or that the injury to the leg etc., was not pre-existing and was caused by the fall. Mr. Wasser then takes depositions of witnesses at approximately $400 per deposition typically on average at least 4 depositions depending on the type of case. At this point Mr. Wasser has invested approximately $10,000 in Mr. Smith’s case. Consequently, the risk of losing a substantial amount of money, and doing a substantial amount of work without any upfront payments by the client, is why personal injury attorneys charge a 40% fee when they go to trial. Of course, some lawyers almost never take a case to trial. In the even a settlement can happened without the filing of a lawsuit the standard contingency attorney’s fee is 33%. Unlike most of the other lawyers (described above) the personal injury lawyer has his own time, effort, and money and for lack of a better term his own “skin in the game” none of the other attorneys described above take the risks that the personal injury attorney takes. Try walking into a divorce lawyer’s office and explaining how you will only pay the $400 an hour fee at the end of the case, and only if the divorce attorney can guarantee that you win the case. Generally speaking, that will never happen.