The fee agreement arrives as two or three pages, often by email, often on the same afternoon the adjuster first calls. It is a contract, and in California a contingency fee agreement has to be in writing, signed, with a copy handed to the client, and it has to say in plain terms that the percentage is negotiable and is not fixed by law. Most people sign it in under a minute. The careful reader spends fifteen, because the four things worth checking are all on those pages and all in ordinary English.
The percentage, and the tier that changes it
A third of the gross recovery is the common opening number on a straightforward car crash claim in Los Angeles County. What matters more than the number is whether there is a second number underneath it. Many agreements step up, often to forty percent, once a lawsuit is filed, or once the case is set for trial, or once an arbitration demand goes out. Read which event trips the higher rate, because filing a complaint is cheap and fast, and an agreement that jumps the moment a summons issues is a different deal from one that jumps only when a trial date is on the calendar.
Also check what the percentage is calculated on. Gross recovery means the whole settlement, before medical bills and case costs come out. Net means after costs, which produces a smaller fee on the same settlement. That single word is worth real money on a mid-sized claim, and it is the kind of term that is rarely explained aloud unless somebody asks. Medical malpractice is its own world in California, with fees capped by statute on a sliding scale, so an agreement written for a hospital case will not look like the one written for a rear-end collision.
Costs are billed separately, and they add up quietly
The fee pays for the lawyer's time. Case costs are everything else: filing fees, the process server, certified medical records, the deposition reporter, postage, the expert who reviews the imaging, the accident reconstruction if it ever gets that far. Those are advanced by the firm and taken out of the settlement on top of the fee. The question to ask is whether costs come off before or after the fee is calculated, and whether the client owes them if the case loses. Many California firms absorb costs on a loss. Some do not. The agreement says which.
On a case that settles with the adjuster in four months, costs are usually small, a few hundred dollars for records and copying. On a case that goes into litigation, depositions and expert fees can run into the thousands before anyone sees a courtroom. Neither is hidden. Both should be itemized on the settlement statement at the end, line by line, and the client is entitled to see the receipts behind them. The State Bar of California oversees attorney fee agreements and runs a fee arbitration program for clients who think the final accounting is wrong.
The arithmetic on a small claim
Run the numbers before signing, because on small cases the fee can exceed the value a lawyer adds. Say the property damage is settled separately and the injury piece is a few thousand dollars in urgent care and physical therapy with a soft tissue diagnosis and no lost wages. An adjuster's offer on that file lands in a fairly narrow band whether or not a lawyer is involved, because the medical specials drive it. Take a third off, then costs, then whatever the health plan or the med-pay carrier claims back, and the client can end up with less than the unrepresented offer.
The math flips the other way as soon as anything gets complicated: disputed liability, a treatment gap the carrier is using against you, a low policy limit with an underinsured motorist claim stacked behind it, surgery on the horizon, or a commercial defendant with real coverage. In those files a lawyer routinely moves the number by multiples, and a third of a much larger settlement beats all of a small one. The honest test is whether the case has a fight in it.
Paying by the hour for one consultation
There is a middle option most people never hear about. Plenty of California attorneys will sell an hour of advice at an hourly rate, review the police report and the demand you drafted, tell you what the claim is worth and where the carrier is likely to push, and send you back out to handle it yourself. For a modest claim that is often the better trade: a few hundred dollars for judgment, against a third of the recovery for representation. Ask for it by name. If the answer is no, ask who does it.
Bring the agreement home before signing. Nothing in a claim moves so fast that a night with the document costs anything, and the questions it raises are the ones worth asking while the relationship is still being negotiated.