Who’s Paying for This? The Cost Shifting Benefit of Contingency Fee Agreements

[Music] Hi this is Stuart Albertson with Albertson and Davidson and we've been discussing contingency fee agreements and the benefits the advantages and disadvantages to entering into a contingency fee agreement and I want to talk to you about one more benefit on the contingency fee agreement is the costs that your attorney agrees to pay while the case is going forward now most costs are not significant I mean they're they're real money but they're not significant such as the filing fee fees to get a court reporter to do a deposition subpoena fees we're talking ten twenty thirty thousand dollars in the life of the case maybe more if it's a bigger case but it's not going to be too much more than that but there is one set of costs that go really high really fast in a trust and will case where lack of capacity or undue influence is a central issue and that has to do with hiring an expert an expert in this case would be either neurologist or a psychiatrist somebody that specializes in forensic League owing back and looking at medical records to determine if a decedent was either they did lack capacity or were they subject to the exercise of undue influence these experts are very good people and so we're not upset at them for how much they have to bill us but we do want to point out that it is quite expensive to hire them in many cases it'll be ten to fifteen thousand dollars just to hire them and then because if they have so much education and experience and it's such a specialized area they charge generally anywhere between four hundred and a thousand dollars an hour and that time is spent reviewing medical records coming up to a to determine opinions if I just even did in fact lack capacity at the time of trust or will was created or if the decedent was subject to the exercise of undue influence sometimes you have to have more than one of these experts in a case so let's say that you hire a lawyer on a contingency fee agreement any trust and well contest where you have to hire one of these experts and that expert bills out and say forty thousand dollars for the life of the case if you lose that case at the time of trial which is a bad result for everyone and nobody hopes we lose but if you do lose that case the Tama trial the lawyer is the one that is stuck with the 40,000 dollar bill not you the client so that's just one more benefit of contingencies. [Music] [Applause] [Music]