Settling with the adjuster yourself, hiring a firm on contingency, or paying a lawyer by the hour to review the offer
A contingency agreement is usually two or three pages, and most of it is boilerplate about communication and withdrawal. The money lives in about four sentences. Those sentences decide whether a third of the settlement leaves, or closer to forty percent once costs are layered in, and they are written in a way that reads as standard until you compare two firms side by side. Read them before signing, because the terms are almost always negotiable at the start and almost never negotiable at the end.
The percentage, and what number it multiplies
One third is the common figure for a pre-suit personal injury case, and many agreements write it as 33 1/3 percent rather than a round 33. The more important question is what it multiplies. The fee attaches to the gross recovery, meaning the full amount the insurer pays, not the amount left after medical bills and liens come out. So a $90,000 settlement on which you personally see $49,000 still generates a $30,000 fee, and that is normal rather than a red flag. Knowing it in advance changes how the first offer sounds.
The step-up, and what triggers it
Most agreements raise the percentage at some defined event: filing the complaint, the case being set for trial, or the filing of an appeal. Forty percent after suit is filed is a common second tier. What a careful reader checks is the trigger, because "upon filing suit" and "upon the case being scheduled for trial" are months and sometimes years apart in effort. Ask whether the higher rate applies to the whole recovery or only to the increase obtained after filing, and ask who decides to file.
Costs before the fee, or costs after
Two agreements can both say one third and still produce different checks, because one calculates the fee on the gross recovery and the other calculates it after case costs are deducted. On a $90,000 settlement with $4,260 in costs, a fee taken off the gross is $30,000, and a fee taken after costs is $28,580. The difference is $1,420, which is small relative to the case and large relative to the effort of asking. Also check what happens to costs if the case is lost, since some agreements advance them and forgive them, and some advance them and bill them.
What the costs line actually contains
Case costs are separate from the fee and are reimbursed out of your share. In a modest case they cluster around a few predictable items: the civil filing fee, service of process on the defendant, certified medical records requests billed by the page by hospital release vendors, deposition transcripts, and mediation. The item that moves the total is expert work. A treating physician's narrative report, a records review by a retained orthopedist, or an accident reconstruction each carry four-figure invoices, and a case that needs two experts costs several times what a case needing none does. Ask which experts are contemplated and at what stage.
A worked disbursement sheet
Take that $90,000 settlement, fee calculated on the gross, costs reimbursed afterward. The attorney fee at one third is $30,000. Costs total $4,260: a $402 filing fee, $75 for service, $310 in records requests, $2,500 for a physician's narrative report, and $973 for deposition transcripts. The health plan asserted a $6,800 reimbursement claim, reduced to $4,533 because the plan shares proportionally in the cost of recovery. Two provider balances left unpaid by insurance total $2,100. Subtract all of it and the client receives $49,107, which the disbursement sheet should show line by line before anyone signs the release.
Two habits make that sheet trustworthy. Ask for it in draft, before the settlement check is deposited, so that any lien you think is negotiable is still negotiable. And ask for copies of the cost invoices, not just the total, because a $2,500 expert line should correspond to a $2,500 bill from a named doctor with a date on it. The Internal Revenue Service is the authority on how settlement proceeds and attorney fee payments are reported, so ask early whether any part of your recovery will generate a tax form, and keep the disbursement sheet with your records either way.