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Comment by oneoff786 | Hacker News Reader

Ok but if you lose, your client gets $0 and owes you $50k. No? And if you settle?

No. It’s a contingency fee. My client isn’t paying me hourly. If we lose, we both get $0. This is how lots and lots of plaintiff litigation works, if you’re not familiar. Those guys advertising for car accidents on billboards are not charging you an hourly rate.

As plaintiff’s attorneys, we take cases we believe in, we spend our money to prosecute the case (I almost always pay that $200 AAA filing fee for my clients), and then we get paid out on the back end. In my personal opinion, it’s a much more appropriate compensation method, because it puts our interests firmly in line.

Based on the very limited understanding I have of this case, if we settle, I’m targeting a 10k settlement and taking a percentage of that (a percentage smaller than the client), and so my client is getting 5k+.

Why don’t you charge 1,000 an hour then?

Courts do lodestar calculations to determine if the hourly billing rates/number of hours were appropriate.

don’t charge $1000 an hour, because, ultimately the fee charged must be “reasonable.“ Now, as a boy who grew up lower middle class, the idea that an hour of my time is worth $500 or more as part of these calculations is something that I still struggle with. But my rates are in line with my peers, what the system considers to be a reasonable rate, and consistent with my experience and education. But at $1000 an hour, most judges will call BS. Again, I didn’t make the system, I’m just surviving in it

Since you work on contingency, the $500/hr is also compensating you for the risk that it will turn out to be $0/hr, right? Or do you pretty reliably get to a settlement that involves your full fee being paid?

It would be far more reasonable if you had to pay the other side's fees if you lost

Many jurisdictions outside the US do (much more readily) award fees so that the loser has to pay the winner's legal costs.

The disadvantage of it is that if you're just some guy against a BigCo, then instead of risking having to pay your own $50k lawyer bill you're potentially risking having to pay their $5M lawyer bill.

Fees can be capped by offering a settlement. The court will not allow you to ignore a reasonable settlement and then charge fees for work done after. “Reasonable” is defined by a better or similar outcome to what you got in the end by continuing litigation.

What about capping fees at whatever the party having to pay spent on their legal team, so the party choosing to pay more expensive lawyers for more hours is taking the risk on that increased cost vs. the other, and the less you spend on your side the less you're liable to pay if you lose?

We have a system where lawyers cannot charge contingency fees. I guess the rationale is founded upon lawyers being perceived as 'officers of court', and the expectation of ethical conduct. When money is a factor, boundaries of ethical conduct tend to be hazy. while you owe a duty to the client, you also owe certain duties to the court/tribunal and even to the adversaries- including duty of fairness.

It is interesting to note that while some of the U.S. rules of professional conduct states that a lawyer shall represent a client "zealously", such a requirement is missing in our code of conduct rules.

He works on contigency. That is a 'no cure no pay' system.

Contingency based, so no result = no charge.

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