Recommended Citation
Steve Calandrillo, Chryssa V. Deliganis, and Neela Brocato, Contingency Fee Conflicts: Attorneys Push for Quick-Kill Settlements When Their Clients Would Be Better Off Going to Trial, 26 N.Y.U. J. LEGIS. & PUB. POL'Y 1 (2023), https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/faculty-articles/1109
Publication Title
New York University Journal of Legislation and Public Policy
Keywords
Attorney fees, Contingency fees, Attorney-client relationship, Behavioral economics, Settlement, Fee system, Access to justice
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Despite the checkered history of contingency fees in the practice of law, attorneys often claim that such fee arrangements perfectly align the interests of lawyer and client. After all, contingency fee lawyers proclaim in TV ad after TV ad, "we don’t get paid unless you win." That superficial logic does not withstand economic scrutiny. Utilizing a behavioral economics lens, this Article demonstrates that contingency fee arrangements give attorneys excessive incentives to settle cases that their clients would be better off taking all the way through trial. In addition to highlighting this undertheorized problem in law, we offer normative recommendations to help alleviate the conflict. Ultimately, we need to devise a hybrid fee system that provides compensation proportionate to how hard an attorney works, provides incentives for the best possible outcome for her client (whether obtained at trial or via settlement), and ensures that low-income plaintiffs can still obtain access to the doors of justice.