Corporate Counsel Magazine Article Discusses Benefits of Contingency Fee Representation for Companies
An article in Corporate Counsel Magazine discusses companies who minimize their legal expenses by retaining counsel on a contingent fee basis. “A Fee-for-All” recognizes a growing trend among corporations to reduce or even eliminate their own risk of loss in a case by hiring an attorney on a contingency fee basis. The authors, Ben Whitwell and Jeffrey Valle, explore some of the issues that in-house counsel should consider in determining who to retain in a particular case. When a company is considering filing a lawsuit as a plaintiff, in-house counsel may best serve the company by looking to a firm that has the capacity and competency to represent it on a contingent fee basis.
The article also points to another reason to consider contingent fee representation: the attorney has a tremendous incentive to be brutally honest on the front-end of the case. In a contingent fee case, neither client nor lawyer benefits from being overly optimistic about the results. An experienced trial lawyer, then, will investigate and analyze the case before wading into the sea of litigation. Learning whether and why an attorney is willing to wager his or her own time and efforts on a case is itself a valuable asset for a company. At that point, client and lawyer can mutually look towards achieving a positive result in the most efficient means possible.
The authors also touch upon blended contingent fee arrangements, in which the company pays a lower hourly rate to the lawyer in exchange for a percentage of the proceeds. The authors use the example of paying an attorney $200 per hour and 20 percent of any recovery. This provides yet another avenue for in-house counsel to consider in reducing the company’s overhead.