Was this a fee agreement for that Attorney services?
If not, what was it for?
What is the detail that the attorney left out?
Yes, it was a contingent fee agreement (percentage + costs). My family (including a minor) filed a lawsuit. The attorney indicated that leading up to trial, the estimated costs would be about $50k and if it went to trial, the estimate would be about $100k. We agreed we would be willing to spend about $50k and we could reassess as things progressed.
The fee agreement specified "I understand that the attorney is required to provide me with an estimate of such expenses before I enter into an attorney fee agreement and that my attorney fee agreement should include a provision as to how and when such expenses will be paid. The Attorneys may, at their option, advance investigative and litigation expenses, and the Client is, in any event, liable to the Attorneys for such reasonable expenses and disbursements. Such expenses and disbursements are estimated to be $50k prior to trial and $100k if the case proceeds to trial. At its sole discretion, XXXX Law Firm will advance reasonable fees and costs. Authority is given to the Attorneys to incur expenses and make disbursements up to these amounts at this time, which limitation will not be exceeded without the Client's further written authority"
The attorney had a separate fee agreement for each family member. Experts had to be hired. The first one was expensive ($10k) and they required my written authorization to move forward with hiring him which was a simple email response of essentially yes, you may move forward with hiring him. I did not sign any other agreement and assumed they would get our permission for any similar excessive cost as they did in this case. I was not asked again about authorizing the cost for any other expert and we were never apprised of any of the costs being accrued like depositions, other experts, etc. Fast forward to mediation and it was the first time we were told how much they had spent, which was almost $150k, on various experts, depositions, etc. One expert was $35k. They sought my approval on the first one for $10k, but didn't seek approval on the most expensive one or others that exceeded the $10k, which seemed to be their threshold given I had to sign off on that one.
Needless to say, we were stunned. We were told to expect about $50k in costs prior to trial. When reading my agreement, I thought we had them with the $50k cap, but I now see what they are doing. They had each of us sign the same fee agreement and each one references $50k, despite the fact that the context of our initial discussion before agreeing to move forward was $50k for our family. So, they are dividing the cost amongst each family member to stay under the cap. Each agreement indicated $50k, but we thought they put the same amount in each agreement since that is what we discussed with the attorney for our family's total estimated cost. Not once did the attorney reference per person. We would never have move forward with a lawsuit with estimated costs of $150k.
We had our mediation day and our backs are against the wall because depos of experts are coming up and we don't want to incur thousands more in costs. We just received the cost breakdown from the attorney on the day of mediation and were asked to review it. We have not yet responded back to them and this is a critical juncture as we are in the midst of negotiating a settlement offer.
