The headline percentage has barely moved in a decade. Almost everything around it has.
Is the standard rate under pressure?
Not the headline number. What has changed is what sits underneath it — whether the fee comes off the gross or after costs, when the tier steps up, and who carries the cost advance.
Those terms move real money and they attract far less attention from clients than the percentage does.
Why are cost advances the pressure point?
Because case costs have risen faster than settlements. Expert work, records and depositions all cost more than they did, and on a modest case the advance can approach the fee.
A firm carrying twenty such matters is running a small lending operation with no interest income.
What about referral arrangements?
Splits are being renegotiated more openly than they used to be. The old convention is not holding where one firm does substantially all the work.
That is healthy, but it needs to be disclosed properly to the client — and that is where I still see firms being sloppy.
Does any of this reach the client?
It should, and mostly it does through the retainer. My concern is that the terms that changed are the ones clients least understand.
If I were a client I would ask one question: is your fee calculated before or after costs come out? Most people never ask it and it is worth real money.
If I were a client I would ask one question: is your fee calculated before or after costs come out? Most people never ask it.Partner, 22-attorney personal injury practice
What we took away
- Headline contingency percentages have been stable; the terms underneath them have not.
- Rising case costs relative to settlement values are the central pressure, effectively turning firms into lenders.
- Referral splits are being renegotiated more openly, with disclosure practice lagging behind.
- The fee-before-costs versus fee-after-costs question was named as the highest-value question a client can ask.
Method
This piece is an editorial composite illustrating contingency-fee pressures reported across LA County practices — it is not a transcript of named interviews. No fee agreements were reviewed; characterisations are illustrative rather than verified.