What the percentage attaches to, how case costs sit apart from the fee, when the rate steps up, and what a withdrawal clause commits you to.
A contingency agreement is usually two or three pages, printed in a readable font, handed across a table by someone friendly who has already told you the number. Thirty-three and a third. Forty. The number is the part everyone remembers and the part that matters least, because two agreements quoting the same percentage can produce settlement checks that differ by thousands of dollars depending on what the percentage attaches to and what gets subtracted before it does. The careful reader slows down at four places. None of them is the headline rate.
Whether the fee comes off the gross or the net
Say the case settles for sixty thousand dollars and the firm advanced eight thousand dollars in case costs. If the fee is one third of the gross, the firm takes twenty thousand, the costs come out next, and you are left with thirty-two thousand before any medical liens. If the fee is one third of the net, costs come out first, the fee is computed on fifty-two thousand, and you keep roughly thirty-four and a half. Same percentage, same settlement, a difference of about two thousand five hundred dollars. The agreement will say which. Find the sentence, read the order of operations, and ask for it in writing if the language is ambiguous.
Case costs are a separate account you may owe either way
The fee buys the attorney's time. Case costs are the money spent moving the file: certified medical records, filing fees, service of process, court reporters for depositions, an accident reconstruction expert, mediator fees, postage and copying if the firm still bills those. Most firms advance them. The clause to find is what happens if the case produces nothing. Some agreements waive costs on a loss, some make you responsible regardless of outcome, and the difference is not theoretical, because a case that goes to trial and loses can carry expert invoices in the tens of thousands. Ask for a sample cost ledger from a comparable case.
The rate that steps up, and what trips it
Tiered fees are ordinary and defensible. Filing a lawsuit turns a negotiation into litigation, with discovery, motions, depositions and a trial calendar, and the firm's exposure rises accordingly. Thirty-three and a third before suit, forty after, forty-five if an appeal is taken, is a common shape. What a careful reader checks is the trigger. A rate that rises when a complaint is actually filed is one thing. A rate that rises on the date a demand is rejected, or when the file is assigned to a litigation attorney, or at a fixed number of days after signing, hands the firm control of the increase. Ask who decides to file, and whether you have to approve it.
What the agreement says about walking away
You can fire your attorney at any time. That is the rule almost everywhere, and no agreement overrides it. What the agreement governs is what the departing firm gets paid, and the two common versions behave very differently. Some provide for quantum meruit, meaning the reasonable value of work performed, typically an hourly figure supported by time records. Others assert a lien for the full contingency percentage on whatever you eventually recover, which can leave two firms claiming a fee from one settlement. Also look for the clause letting the firm withdraw, and for whether you owe advanced costs on the way out.
Reading the rest with the same attention
Fee agreements are consumer contracts, and the Federal Trade Commission is responsible for consumer protection in contract terms generally, though attorney fees are policed primarily by state bar rules that require the agreement be in writing, signed, and clear about costs. Beyond the four clauses, check the settlement authority language, which should say no offer is accepted without your written consent. Check whether medical liens and health insurance subrogation are handled by the firm or left to you. Check whether an associated or referral firm shares the fee and at what split. Ask for a copy the day you sign, not the week after.
Take the draft home overnight. A firm that will not let a prospective client read the agreement away from the conference room has told you something useful for free, and the firms worth hiring expect the questions and answer them in specifics: this trigger, this ledger, this order of operations, written into the page you both sign.