The number in the demand letter and the number on the check you deposit are separated by three deductions, and the order in which they are taken changes the answer. A careful reader of a contingency agreement is looking for four things: what percentage applies, what event makes it go up, whether the fee is calculated before or after expenses come out, and who else has a claim on the money before it becomes yours. All four are usually written down. They are rarely written in the same paragraph, and one of them is often on the back page.
Where the percentage is written, and what it attaches to
Most personal injury representation in the United States is sold on contingency, meaning a percentage of the recovery rather than an hourly rate. One third is the common opening figure, expressed as 33 and a third percent or sometimes as a flat one third. The sentence that matters is the one defining what the percentage multiplies. A fee on the gross recovery is calculated against the full settlement before anything is deducted. A fee on the net is calculated after case expenses are repaid. On a mid-sized case the difference is usually a four-figure sum, paid by whichever party the contract silently favors.
The step-up, and the event that triggers it
Almost every agreement contains a tier. The rate begins at one third and rises, often to forty percent, when a defined event occurs. That event is not the passage of time. It is a specific procedural step: filing suit, the case being set for trial, the taking of the first deposition, or the filing of a notice of appeal. Read the trigger closely, because filing suit is routine in some offices and exceptional in others, and a firm that files early as a matter of habit will reach the higher tier on cases that settle without a courtroom ever being reserved.
Case expenses are not the fee
Expenses are the money spent moving the case, and they are repaid separately from the percentage. Filing fees, service of process, deposition transcripts, medical records requests, accident reconstruction, treating physician narrative reports, expert review, and mediator fees all sit here. Ordinary overhead, meaning rent, staff salaries, postage and photocopying, should not. Ask whether expenses are advanced by the firm and repaid only from recovery, or billed to you regardless of outcome. Ask also whether the firm charges interest on advanced costs. Both answers should be in writing, and a firm that puts them there plainly is telling you something useful about how it operates.
Liens, and why the first number is negotiable
Anyone who paid for your treatment may have a right to be repaid from the settlement. A health insurer asserting subrogation, a hospital filing a statutory lien, a treating provider working on a letter of protection, Medicare or Medicaid seeking reimbursement of conditional payments. These claims are asserted at full billed value and are frequently reduced, sometimes substantially, through negotiation over what was actually paid rather than charged. This is skilled, unglamorous work, and it changes your outcome as much as the settlement figure does. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau oversees how medical debt is collected and reported, which is worth knowing if a provider bill outlives the claim.
One settlement, followed to the bottom
Take a gross settlement of $90,000, resolved before suit, on a one third fee calculated on the gross. The fee is $30,000. Case expenses come to $4,200: records, a narrative report, and a mediator. The hospital lien is asserted at $11,000 and negotiated to $7,300. Subtracting all three leaves $48,500 reaching your account. Now shift a single clause. Calculate the fee on the net instead, deducting the $4,200 first: the fee falls to roughly $28,600, and you keep about $1,400 more. Same case, same lawyer, same insurer. One sentence in the agreement.
Run that arithmetic before you sign, using the settlement range the firm itself thinks is realistic, and ask for the disbursement statement format you will eventually receive so you can see the line items in advance. Good firms hand it over without hesitation, because the numbers hold up. The percentage is the headline, but the tier trigger, the gross-or-net clause and the lien negotiation are where the money moves.