Understand If You Owe Your Attorney Legal Fees In These 3 Situations

The ideal situation is to work with an attorney on your legal case from start to finish. Unfortunately, this doesn't always happen. There are situations where you may not work with a single attorney throughout the entire case, which raises the question about what kind of legal fees you could owe. By understanding these three situations, you will know what to expect when it comes to a final bill.

You Select A New Attorney

When you end up deciding that you want a new attorney to work on your case, it means you'll still be interested in winning your case and continue pursuing it. In addition, the second attorney will need to accept your case because they feel it could lead to a legal victory. In this unique situation, an arrangement will be made between the old and new attorney based on how much work was done on the case by both parties.

If the attorneys cannot agree on how to split their share, a lien could be placed on your settlement amount. It means that the first attorney would be entitled to their fair share of the settlement according to how much of the case they worked on.

Your Attorney Ends Your Contract With Them

When your original attorney decides that they no longer want to work your case, they may end up forfeiting their legal fees as well. This would only be in a situation where they decide to terminate their relationship with you on their own, with it being unrelated to factors such as how cooperative you've been during the process.

This can happen if the attorney is working for you on contingency, and they reach a point in the case where they feel you have no chance of winning. Since there would be no settlement, they would not receive payment for their time. If you worked with another attorney and won your case, the original attorney would not be entitled to anything since they gave up on it.

You Stop Pursuing Your Case

When you are the one that decides to stop pursuing the case, you could be liable for your attorney's legal fees even if it was a contingency case. Your attorney would have put a lot of time and effort into your case, and they still need to be compensated.

No matter what kind of case you have, make sure you check with your attorney about all situations where you could be responsible for paying their legal fees. Visit http://gomezmaylaw.com/ for more information. 

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