Workers’ Comp Q&A with Brian Yost | How Does My Lawyer Get Paid?

Transcript

A lot of people have one of their biggest questions: How does my lawyer get paid?

Do I owe him anything up front? Is this something I'm going to be able to do?

The court wants everybody to have access to a lawyer. So they say, “Brian, we want you to help Dawn, and we understand that she might not be in a position to pay you. So what we're going to do is allow you to work on a contingency fee.”

That means I get paid at the end of your case. Whatever I recover for you, the law firm takes its fee from that recovery. That's how it works.

That way, everybody can have access to the courthouse.

You see these commercials and billboards saying, “You don't pay unless we win,” or “You don't get paid unless we get you all this money.” That's called a contingency fee.

What that means is that the lawyer, me, gets paid at the end of your case.

Well, how much do I get paid?

I get paid a percentage of what I recover on your behalf.

In South Carolina, a workers' compensation lawyer recovers one-third of whatever we get for you as a fee.

So, our fee is one-third of whatever we recover for you.

For example, if I get you three dollars, the law firm gets one dollar and you get two.

From your two dollars, we recoup some expenses. But our law firm has been open for fifty years or better, and we've never taken a check larger for ourselves than the one that we would give to our client.

People think, you hear it all the time, “The lawyer's going to take all of your money.”

That's ridiculous.

You have no idea what you're entitled to under the law, but a lawyer does.

I would say that nine times out of ten, you're going to come out a lot better with a lawyer than you did trying to go it alone.