The objection underneath the fee question is rarely stated plainly, so let me state it. People suspect that a lawyer takes a third of the money, and the client ends up in roughly the same place, having given away a percentage for work that might not have changed the outcome.
It is a fair thing to wonder about. In my experience, the answer is definitely “No”. In a case with serious injuries and real treatment, representation increases the number the case settles for, and it increases it by much more than the fees.
But the more useful version of the answer is not statistical. It is what a lawyer should tell you when your case is the exception.
If hiring me, if hiring our law firm means you're going to end up with less money, or more importantly, if we can't add significant value to your situation, then I would advise somebody not to hire a lawyer. It doesn't do me any good, and more importantly, the client any good, to collect a small fee and not add real value to our clients.
The Cases Where a Lawyer Does Not Add Value
There are calls that come in where the right advice is to not hire us, and those calls happen at The May Firm regularly enough that they are part of the intake conversation rather than an exception to it.
The logic is not complicated. A fee is a percentage of a recovery. If representation is not going to meaningfully affect the recovery, then the percentage is coming out of money the client would have received anyway, and nobody is better off. Collecting a small fee in that situation does not do the firm any good, and it certainly does not do the client any good.
And so the honest version of this question is not "does a lawyer take a percentage." It is "does this particular case have room in it for a lawyer to earn that percentage and leave the client ahead?" That is a question a firm can answer on a first call, and it should.
In a Real Case, the Answer Is Consistent
In a significant case, one with real injuries and real treatment and real exposure, it is essentially always worth having representation.
I can count on my hands the number of times we came in, did good work, and it just was not worth it for the client. Over twenty years of practice, that is a small enough set of cases to be memorable individually, which tells you something about how the general rule runs.
The reason is the same reason from the previous chapter. The value of a claim is not fixed at the moment of the crash. It moves based on what gets documented, what gets preserved, how the injuries are established, and how much pressure exists on the other side to pay something closer to full value. Those are the variables representation acts on.
Karma Cases
There is a third category worth naming, because it does not fit the economics at all.
Sometimes, there are cases the firm takes on purely to help somebody out, where the point is that the person ends up in a better position than they would have on their own. I just call them karma cases. They are not the business model, and they are not going to be, but a practice that never takes one is a practice organized around something other than the client.
I mention it because it is the clearest answer to the underlying suspicion in this chapter. A firm that only ever takes the profitable case is telling you what it optimizes for, and you can find that out on the first call by asking what happens if your case turns out to be small.
Common Questions
- Do you get less money when you hire a lawyer for a car accident?
- In a case of any real size, no. What a case resolves for is not fixed at the moment of the crash. It changes based on what gets documented, what evidence gets preserved, and how much pressure exists on the other side. The exception is a case with no real room in it, and Robert May's stated position is that in that situation, the right advice is not to hire a lawyer at all, because collecting a small fee without adding real value serves no one. Oftentimes, small claims court is a quicker and much less expensive option for very small cases with very minimal injuries and medical care.
- How do I know if my case is worth hiring an attorney for?
- Ask for a free consultation. A firm that handles these cases regularly can tell you quickly whether representation is likely to change your outcome. If the answer is that it will not, a good firm says so. That conversation costs nothing and it is the fastest way to resolve the question.
- Will a lawyer take my case if it is small?
- Sometimes, and not always for financial reasons. Some cases get taken on specifically so the person ends up in a better position, which Robert May refers to as karma cases. Other small cases are better served by a referral or by handling the claim directly, and a firm should tell you which situation you are in.
- Does the lawyer's percentage come out of my medical bills too?
- The fee is calculated on the gross recovery, and medical bills and liens are handled as separate deductions from that same recovery. Chapter 7 walks through the full order of deductions, from fees and costs through insurance reimbursement and negotiated liens, so you can see what actually reaches you.
Chapter Reflection
The test for whether a fee is worth paying is whether the representation changes the number. In any real case, it does, and consistently enough that the exceptions stand out in memory. The next question is the mechanical one: how that fee actually works.