Cost of Hiring a Truck Accident Attorney

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Cost of Hiring a Phoenix Truck Accident Attorney

Truck accidents often result in catastrophic or even fatal injuries to more than one accident victim. Most people do not have enough saved up to pay for expensive medical bills and rehabilitation associated with catastrophic injuries, such as paralysis or a traumatic brain injury. Families are often unprepared for the financial losses associated with a breadwinner’s untimely death. As a truck accident victim, you may be concerned that with all these mounting costs, the cost of hiring a truck accident attorney would be too great. However, most personal injury attorneys, including Phoenix truck accident lawyer Freddy Saavedra, work on a contingency fee basis in truck accident cases.

The Cost of Hiring a Truck Accident Attorney

Contingency fee agreements make sense in certain types of cases, including personal injury cases. Most people are not able to afford an attorney’s usual hourly fee even when they have a legitimate claim. In Arizona, a contingency fee is for services provided when the fee is paid only if the client gets a favorable result — a settlement or verdict in their favor. Attorneys who work on a contingency fee basis do not get paid unless their clients are awarded money in court or receive money in a settlement.

The fee needs to be reasonable. In Arizona, factors used to gauge whether fees are reasonable include the novelty and difficulty of the questions in the case, the skill needed to perform legal services appropriately, the likelihood that accepting the case will prevent the lawyer from accepting other cases, the time and labor involved, the customary fee, time limitations imposed by the client, the nature and length of the professional relationship, the reputation and ability of the lawyer performing the services, and whether the fee is contingent or fixed.

Distinction Between Attorneys’ Fees and Costs

It is important when interviewing an attorney to understand what your costs will be. In most cases, truck accident attorneys work on a contingency fee basis, but the client may be responsible for the costs of pursuing the claim. Costs are distinct from attorneys’ fees. The costs of pursuing a claim can include administrative costs, filing fees, and expert witness costs. Usually, the attorney advances the costs to the client and recovers the costs when they settle the case.

When an attorney agrees to advance costs, which may be considerable for a truck accident case, it means that the attorney must properly work up a case even before accepting it to make sure that the risk is worth taking and to get a sense of how much the case is worth. Working up a case may mean sending a truck accident reconstruction expert out to the scene of a complex accident to determine which dynamics interacted to cause the accident. In deciding whether to represent you, an attorney may look carefully at your personal situation because it can have an impact on a jury’s sympathy for the intangible harm that you suffered or an insurance adjustor’s assessment of whether a jury would be sympathetic to you.

You may be wondering how much a contingency fee is. Attorneys usually take 33%-40% of a judgment award, hinging on factors such as how complex the truck accident case is, the lawyer’s reputation and experience, and whether the case can be settled out of court or is likely to go to trial. This means that you will not be charged any upfront fee, and if you do not obtain compensation, your attorney will not get paid at all.

Hire a Truck Accident Lawyer in Phoenix on a Contingency Fee Basis

If you or a loved one has been harmed, and you suspect that someone else was at fault, you should understand that the cost of hiring a truck accident attorney is not something that you need to bear upfront. The Saavedra Law Firm represents accident victims in the Phoenix area and elsewhere in Maricopa County. Contact us at (602) 878-6625 or via our online form.

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