Can I afford a personal injury lawyer?
If you’ve spent any time recently on CP24 or the radio, you’ve likely heard slogans outlining the basics of what is referred to as a “contingency fee agreement.”
Common in all aspects of personal injury law, these agreements permit a person to hire a lawyer without any upfront monetary retainer, with their legal fees calculated as an amount of the total settlement or outcome achieved for the client.
In simpler terms, you’ll pay the lawyer a percentage of what the insurance company (or defendant) pays you when your matter resolves either through a settlement or outcome from a trial or hearing, and you don’t have to pay anything to get started.
In the past these agreements varied considerably from firm to firm, both in terms of percentage as well as how the agreement would calculate fees.
Due to the challenges this posed for potential clients, as well as law firms trying to navigate a competitive marketplace, the Law Society of Ontario standardized all agreements into a simplified form as of July 1, 2021.
Any lawyer being hired on a contingency fee basis must use standardized language and comply with certain transparency requirements and regulations.
Many lawyers practising in this field (Ross & McBride included) were, and remain, in favour of this standardization and transparency.
Contingency fee agreements have been upheld by the courts as critical for the average person to access the potentially enormous cost of litigation when facing a battle with a multibillion-dollar insurance company.
Without them, the average person, who may have just lost a job, or become injured and are now without income, would struggle to fund any litigation to enforce their legal rights.
Therefore, if you’ve recently been injured and are considering whether you can afford a lawyer — the answer is probably yes. At Ross & McBride we’re always happy to discuss the details of a retainer agreement and how it would work in your case, and there are no upfront fees for these types of initial consultations.
This article was originally published by The Hamilton Spectator.
