- posted: Jan. 26, 2012
When you’ve been injured in a car accident and it becomes time to retain a lawyer, many questions may cross your mind. Typically, many of our clients have same questions and concerns regarding our fee. We felt it was important to take this time out to answer some of those reoccurring questions so that you may know the answers before deciding to retain us.
How much will Licatesi Law Group, LLP charge me to handle my personal injury claim?
A: NOTHING, unless you are compensated for your injuries. When you’re paid, we are; but if you’re not, neither are we!
One of the great things about our firm is that until you recover money for your personal injury claim, we work on your case for free. This means that at no time do you ever have to hand over ANY money to us.
The benefits of this are three-fold; first, if you don’t recover any money, then you will owe us nothing; therefore you never have to worry about receiving a bill from us. Secondly, if we only get paid when you do, you can be confident in how hard we are working to ensure you are compensated for your injuries. Finally, we lay out all the expenses for your case, and will only be reimbursed for all the money we laid out if and when you recover. If you do not recover, we do not recover any of the money we laid out in expenses.
How much will Licatesi Law Group, LLP charge me if I do recover?
A: In the instance that you do recover something, we will charge you a one-third contingency fee. Here is a brief synopsis of how it works: when your claim has been resolved, we first take out the amount of expenses we laid out. Next, we will take our fee (1/3) & then we will give you the remainder. Let’s say your claim is resolved for $35,000 and there is $2,000 in expenses; we are left with $33,000. 1/3 of that $33,000=$11,000, which will be our fee. The $22,000 leftover then is all yours!
What types of expenses are there in a personal injury law suit?
Expenses in a personal injury case can vary, but a typical personal injury case will not require an exuberant amount of money in expenses. For example, when we begin your personal injury lawsuit, we will have to file a summons & complaint, which costs $210. Anytime a motion is filed, there is also a fee. As well as that, all papers must be served on the Defendant, and therefore we will need to pay for those papers to be served. Other expenses include paying for a court reporter at the deposition or paying each doctor you see for a copy of your medical records.
The expenses begin to get higher when a case goes to trial. In this case, we may have to pay a doctor or other type of expert to testify. We have to pay these doctors for their time, and some of them can be pricey; ranging from $500 – $10,000. Other experts may be required as well, such as accident reconstruction for a complex set of facts, or more than one doctor due to their areas of expertise. This is where expenses can become very high, and will end up reducing the amount you recover.
Here at Licatesi Law Group, LLP, we do our best to lower the expenses, and we take into consideration how much the case is worth before laying out too much money. We negotiate with the insurance company way before putting the claim into suit, and thus we attempt to recover you the maximum amount of money without incurring all those expenses for filing a lawsuit & motion practice. We do this to protect our clients. Sometimes we may suggest the client settle before trial, even if the number is slightly lower than anticipated. This is because we are looking out for YOU, and if the case when to trial, you would end up pocketing much less than you will if you settle on this slightly lower number.
For more information: Call (516) 478-0237
By: Candice L. Deaner, Esq.
