What Does “No Win, No Fee” Actually Mean?

The civil justice system is built on contingency fee arrangements. This means that the client owes nothing - in costs or attorneys’ fees - unless they win. This arrangement allows everyday people to go toe-to-toe with billion-dollar insurance companies and wealthy corporations without paying hundreds of dollars out of pocket.

But here is the catch that the billboard lawyers won't tell you: because it costs you nothing upfront to sign up, it also costs nothing to collect your case like inventory, throw your file into a dark corner, and let it sit there. But before you choose any lawyer, you deserve to know exactly how the money works.

A contingency fee is straightforward: the lawyer’s fee is contingent on winning. If they recover money for you via a settlement or a jury verdict, they are paid a percentage of your recovery. But if they lose, you don’t owe them any attorney’s fees.

There is a difference between an attorney's fee and case expenses. And this is where the fine print can catch you off guard. To win a serious injury or death case, a lawyer can’t just fill out a few forms and hope for the best. Building a case for trial is  expensive. Behind the scenes, money must be spent to prove the truth about what happened to you. These are called case expenses, and they include:

• Filing Fees: Just paying the court to launch a lawsuit can cost hundreds of dollars.
• Expert Witnesses: In complex cases, we have to hire talented experts and analysts to prove your damages. These experts don’t work on contingency. They charge thousands of dollars for their time and testimony.
• Depositions: Paying court reporters and videographers to record testimony under oath quickly runs into thousands of dollars per day. (Where is AI innovation when you need it?).

By the time a catastrophic injury case gets to a courtroom, a law firm might easily invest $20,000 to over $100,000 of their own money into the fight just to pay for these expenses.

We look at contingency fees as a true partnership. We protect a strictly selective caseload because we are ready to invest the financial resources required to outwork the opposition at every stage.

• We front the expenses: We cover every single court fee, expert retainer, and deposition cost out of our own pocket while your case is active.
• We only get paid if you get paid: If we take your case to trial and lose, we don’t just eat our time—we eat those expenses, too. You owe us nothing.

This means that when we take your case, we are putting our own skin in the game.