Access to Justice: How Contingency Fee Agreements Help you Hire a Trust and Will Litigation Lawyer

[Music] Hi this is Stuart Albertson with Albertson and Davidson I want to talk to you about contingency fees and how they can give access to some beneficiaries who don't have the ability to pay lawyers on an hourly basis so the traditional way that many people hire lawyers is they give that lawyer retainer say 10 15 $20,000 and the retainer the lawyer bills against that retainer according to their hourly rate and when that retainer runs out the lawyer asks for more money well many beneficiaries are not in a position where they can pay lawyers to represent them in a trust contest or a will contest case and so there is an option for contingency fee now keep in mind you generally do better overall to hire a lawyer on an hourly basis if you can because you'll spend less overall on a case that you will if there is a successful outcome in a contingency fee case as far as attorneys fees go so let's give an example you hire a lawyer to handle a case for you you've got a million dollars at stake and you pay that lawyer a hundred thousand dollars an hourly fees to get you your access to that million dollars well that's a pretty good result for you you paid $100,000 in hourly fees to that lawyer and you end up getting the million dollars that was supposed to come to you but for whatever reason wasn't say a trustee was refusing to make the distribution to you now if you didn't have the money to pay the lawyer on an hourly basis you could hire that same lawyer on a contingency fee basis which is a percentage of the recovery generally speaking most cases are going to be 40% in California so take that same number a lawyer works the case for a year and a half two years just before trial the case settles and it's a million dollar recovery to you if you apply the math at 40% that would be a $400,000 attorneys fee and the balance would go to you so you can see the difference it generally makes sense to hire a lawyer on an hourly basis versus a contingency fee basis but if you don't have the ability to hire a lawyer on an hourly basis then the best option for you to do is to consider the contingency fee which is a way to recover something for you that you normally couldn't get access to the legal system if you didn't have a lawyer that willing to take your case on a contingency fee basis so that's the distinction between the hourly and the contingency and just a little bit of how a contingency can work to return assets to you that are rightfully yours. [Music] [Applause] [Music]