Professional services
Law Practice Contingency Fee Calculator
How a contingency recovery divides, and what the matter earned the practice per hour.
Result
Business arithmetic for running a practice, not legal advice. Fee agreements, contingency limits, trust accounting and advertising are all governed by the rules of professional conduct where you practise, and several are strict. Check the applicable rules before any of this affects a client agreement or a marketing decision. Contingency percentages are capped by statute or court rule in many jurisdictions and for many matter types, often on a sliding scale, and some categories require court approval of the fee. The agreement must state whether costs come off before or after the fee, because the difference is material. This does not value a claim and cannot.
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About this calculator
What effective hourly rate should contingency work produce?
Higher than your hourly rate, because you carry the risk of recovering nothing. Work that returns less per hour than billing hourly is transferring risk to you for no premium.
Does the order of deduction matter to the client?
Yes, substantially, and it is where most fee disputes start. It must be explicit in the agreement and explained rather than assumed.
The formula
fee on gross or net depending on the agreement; practice profit = fee less overhead absorbed by the hours
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