Our contingency fee system fills that gap, and does so consistent with well-established rules and ethical traditions.
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There is no shortage of lawyers willing to take on a contingency fee case with a reasonable chance of success and the possibility of significant recovery.
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When for-profit lawyers are involved with a contingency fee at the end of the lawsuit rainbow, the incentives shift toward settling to get a big payday.
Brickman says the contingency fee also has perverse effects similar to stock options, which drove executives to fudge the numbers in order to increase their pay.
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The bottom line is that the contingency fee system already solves the one problem litigation financing addresses, and does so in a manner that avoids the worst excesses.
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The Justice Department says that it, too, may hire outside lawyers to help fight that case, but that if it does, they will be paid a salary, not a contingency fee.
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Legal Newsline is reporting that trial lawyers expect a ruling soon granting them long-sought tax writeoffs for the costs associated with contingency-fee lawsuits.
The American Bar Association considers these contingency-fee arrangements loans, since it prohibits lawyers from extending financial aid to clients (that might encourage frivolous litigation, apparently).
Proponents of contingency-fee lawyers say they provide valuable enforcement powers the state at no cost to taxpayers, and level the playing field against well-heeled corporations.
But the biggest advantage the gun industry may have is that, unlike the tobacco industry, it offers no giant pot of gold for contingency-fee lawyers.
This unleashed the fabled entrepreneurial zeal of America's contingency-fee trial lawyers.
These attorneys work under a contingency-fee arrangement, meaning they are paid a portion (usually one-third) of the money they are able to collect for the victims.
But Powell punctured this legal fiction in a dissent, noting that the lawyer was operating under a contingency-fee agreement and the plaintiff bore no responsibility for the costs.
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But state law also prohibits contingency-fee deals with outside lawyers (Louisiana, surprisingly, is one of the only states to have this common-sense protection against insider deals) and it also requires mediation with BP.
It is a deal between the tobacco industry and a few contingency-fee attorneys (whose pay will not be challenged, as per the settlement), with the states taking a windfall-payment in exchange for co-signing the deal.
It would be a victory for trial lawyers who have complained they must eat the costs of prosecuting contingency-fee cases as incurred and only get to write them off against any fee they obtain at the end.
Writing off the costs each year would substantially boost their after-tax income and increase the attractiveness of contingency-fee cases as an investment, much as tax writeoffs on drilling expenses dramatically increase the odds of financial success in the oil and gas business.
Boies left Cravath in 1997 after a dispute over representing Yankees baseball owner George Steinbrenner in his suit against Major League Baseball. (Time Warner, which owned the Atlanta Braves, was one of Cravath's biggest clients.) It didn't help that Boies had a history of blabbing to the press and taking on high-stakes contingency-fee cases, anathema to some partners at Cravath.
The judge also asked the law firms to explain how their proposed fee compares to what an individual client would pay on a contingency basis in a similar case.
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