The fee agreement an attorney hands you at the first meeting is usually two or three pages, and almost everything that will later determine what lands in your bank account is in the second half of it. The percentage on the front page is the part people read. The clauses that move the number are the ones describing when the percentage rises, what counts as a cost rather than a fee, and whether the fee is calculated before or after those costs come out. A careful reader checks all three before signing, because the agreement governs a case that may run for years.
The percentage is a schedule, not a single number
Most contingency agreements in injury work start at roughly a third of the gross recovery and step up if the case moves past a defined point. That point is rarely the trial date. It is more often the filing of a lawsuit, the service of a complaint, the demand for arbitration, or the scheduling of depositions, any one of which can happen while settlement talks are still going. Read the trigger and ask what would cause it to fire. An attorney who files suit purely to stop a filing deadline from running may have done exactly the right thing, and the fee still steps up, so you want to know in advance whether the agreement lets that happen automatically or requires a conversation first.
Costs advanced are not the fee, and the order matters
Costs are the money spent to build the claim: medical record requests, a police report, filing fees, a court reporter, an expert's file review, postage on certified letters. Under most agreements the firm advances these and is reimbursed out of the settlement, win or lose in some states, only on recovery in others. What changes your net is the sequence. If the fee is a third of the gross, the costs come out of your share afterward. If the fee is a third of the recovery net of costs, you and the attorney split that expense in proportion. On a modest case with heavy records, the difference is real money, and the clause deciding it is usually one sentence long.
One settlement, three ways of paying for help
Take a hypothetical gross settlement of thirty thousand dollars with twelve hundred dollars of advanced costs. A one-third fee on the gross is ten thousand dollars, leaving eighteen thousand eight hundred before any medical lien is satisfied. The same one-third calculated after costs is nine thousand six hundred, leaving nineteen thousand two hundred, a swing of four hundred dollars from that single sentence. Step the fee to forty percent because suit was filed, and the fee becomes twelve thousand on the gross, leaving sixteen thousand eight hundred. Now suppose you negotiated the same thirty thousand yourself and paid a flat fee for a document review plus an hour of advice on the release. You keep the difference between that flat fee and the ten or twelve thousand, and you also carried the work.
What an hour of advice is actually for
Hourly advice buys reading, not representation. The tasks that fit inside an hour or two are specific: reading the declarations page and the exclusions to confirm what coverage exists, including underinsured motorist limits and medical payments coverage; reading a proposed release to see whether it discharges parties and claims beyond the one being settled; and reading a hospital or health plan lien letter to see whether the amount claimed is one the plan can actually enforce. Ask for a written scope and a cap, so the engagement letter says what you get and what it costs. Ask too about the tax treatment of what you receive, because the Internal Revenue Service is responsible for how settlement proceeds and attorney fees are characterized, and the answer differs between physical injury damages and other categories.
The honest comparison is not fee against fee. It is fee against the value of the work you would otherwise do yourself: assembling records, pricing the injury, holding a position through three rounds of adjuster calls, and knowing when an offer has stopped moving. Where the claim is straightforward and the coverage is clear, paid reading at a defined price does a great deal. Where liability is contested or the medical picture is still open, the percentage is buying something an hour cannot.