What a one-third contingency fee actually buys, when an hourly consultation is enough, and the facts that make handling an adjuster yourself a bad trade.
The choice about representation usually gets made in the first two weeks after a crash, when the reader knows the least and the adjuster is calling the most. It is worth slowing down, because the three arrangements available (a contingency fee, an hourly engagement, and doing it yourself with an attorney consulted once or twice) each produce a different net number depending on the size and shape of the claim. The arithmetic is not complicated. What makes it hard is that the size of the claim is often unknown on the day the decision is made.
Run the arithmetic on the claim you actually have
Start with a plain case: soft tissue injuries, four weeks of treatment, clear rear-end liability, and an insurer offering something in the low five figures. On a $15,000 settlement, a one-third fee is $5,000, and case costs (records, a mileage charge, a filing fee if suit is threatened) come off on top of that, sometimes before the fee is calculated and sometimes after, which is a difference worth several hundred dollars. Against that, an attorney who moves the same claim to $22,000 has paid for himself twice over. The question is not whether a third is a lot. It is whether the representation moves the number by more than the third.
Now change one variable. On a claim worth $250,000, a third is roughly $83,000, and the same fee percentage buys work that is genuinely different: depositions, treating physician letters, a life care plan, a filed lawsuit with real trial risk behind it. Many fee agreements step the percentage up once suit is filed, commonly to forty percent, and a careful reader finds that clause before signing rather than at the disbursement meeting. Ask what triggers the step, and whether it is the filing itself, the passing of a scheduling deadline, or the setting of a trial date.
What the one-third covers, and what it does not
The fee pays for the attorney's time and judgment, and for carrying the file with no payment until it resolves. It does not usually pay for case costs, which are advanced by the firm and repaid out of the settlement: medical records, imaging copies, court reporters, expert witness fees, accident reconstruction, service of process, and postage. On a small claim, costs might be two hundred dollars. On a contested case with two experts, they can reach five figures, and they come out of the client's share whether or not the recovery covers them. The agreement should say what happens if it does not.
Lien negotiation is the other line item to check. Health insurers, hospital lienholders, Medicare and Medicaid all assert repayment rights, and reducing those claims can add more to the client's pocket than the last round of haggling with the adjuster did. Some firms treat that work as part of the fee. Some bill it separately. Ask. The IRS is the authority on how the resulting proceeds are treated for tax purposes, and physical injury recoveries are handled differently from interest and punitive components, which is a conversation worth having before the check is cut rather than the following April.
When two hours of an attorney's time is enough
There is a real category of claim where hiring on contingency costs more than it returns: liability admitted, property damage only or a single urgent care visit, no lost wages, no lingering symptoms, and an insurer that has already made an offer within shouting distance of the medical bills. For that claim, an hourly consultation, paid at whatever the local rate is for an hour or two, buys a review of the medical records, a realistic range for the general damages, and a list of what the release actually gives up. The reader then makes the calls himself and keeps the whole settlement.
Three facts push the answer back toward full representation. Disputed fault, because a comparative negligence argument reduces the recovery by a percentage the adjuster gets to propose first. A serious injury, meaning surgery, permanent restriction, or anything with a future treatment component, because valuing that is not something a claimant can do from a settlement calculator. And a policy limits problem, where the at-fault driver carries the state minimum and the bills exceed it, which turns the case into a hunt for other coverage: underinsured motorist benefits, an employer's policy, an umbrella, a second defendant.
What to read before signing anything
Read the fee agreement for the percentage, the step-up trigger, the treatment of costs relative to the fee, who pays costs if the case loses, what happens if the client discharges the firm midstream, and whether lien work is included. Ask for a sample disbursement sheet from a resolved case of similar size, with names removed. A firm that hands one over without hesitation is telling you something useful about how the last conversation in the case will go.