A lot of people avoid hiring an attorney because they don’t believe they can afford it. With some areas of law that is a legitimate concern. Getting divorced can be crazy expensive for example. In other cases the lawyer might not cost much, but do cost more than the case is worth. For example, it doesn’t make sense to pay a lawyer $500 to get out of a $100 parking ticket.
Work comp is fortunately not an area of law where you have to worry about whether or not you can afford an attorney. There is never an up front cost to hire a lawyer, not even the bad ones :0. Attorney fees are capped at 20% of whatever settlement we can get for you in the end. And if you lose the case, you owe us nothing.
Despite this, I still talk to people every month who are afraid they can’t afford a work comp attorney. That’s because on the contract you sign with the lawyer (by law everyone has to use the same form) says the client agrees to pay the attorney for all expenses related to their pursuing the claim. And it doesn’t really clarify what that means. A copy of the standard Illinois work comp attorney representation agreement can be found here.
So what do you need to know about the expenses? What are you agreeing to when you sign that contract?
First thing to know is that there are no court filing fees. When you file a car accident injury case, the court fees for example can be over $600. Illinois work comp cases aren’t lawsuits so there isn’t a filing fee at all.
The second thing to know is that while there are expenses on most cases, they are usually very small, often under $100. In my 27 years of being an attorney I can only think of two cases where the case expenses got into the low five figures. In many cases there are no expenses at all because the client is able to provide a copy of their medical records.
Third thing to know is that attorneys advance all of the costs. If a law firm is asking you to give them any money to cover expenses that is a huge red flag. Either their firm is in shambles or the case is not a good one. No reputable attorney I’ve ever met would ask the client to front the expenses in a work comp case. The only exception I can think of is if you are switching attorneys and the case needs to go to trial because of possible defenses.
With most cases, the main expense is subpoenaing your medical records which can be as little as $20 per subpoena. Many cases can settle with this being the only expense at all. If the case might go to trial, we’d need to take the deposition of your treating doctor and the IME doctor. We pay the treating doctor for his time testifying and that can be a couple thousand dollars. There would also be a fee for the court reporter and to get a copy of the transcript that can be a couple hundred dollars. The insurance company pays for their IME doctor’s time to testify and the court reporter, but we’d have to pay their court reporter for a transcript copy.
Everything listed in the last paragraph is the limit of expenses in most cases. The big exceptions are times when we represent out of state people with Illinois work comp claims. Sometimes we have to travel to their state to take the deposition of their doctor since they are treating locally. In those situations if we have to fly a long way and spend the night in a hotel, we’d get reimbursed for that. It’s pretty rare, but even when it does happen, we aren’t flying first class or staying at the Ritz Carlton. I once took a deposition in the city where my in-laws lived and stayed with them to save the client money.
When we spend this money on your case, it’s our money, but it’s really yours. That’s because ultimately it comes out of your settlement at the end to reimburse us. Because of that, we don’t spend your money without your permission. Maybe not for a subpoena, but certainly before paying a doctor.
There are some very shady Illinois work comp law firms, in my opinion, who try to charge their clients for expenses that I don’t believe they should charge for. Examples of that are for postage, photo copying, mileage when driving to a doctor’s deposition (when it’s within an hour of their location), mileage to drive to court for status calls, meal expenses and in the worst case, inflated expenses for the doctor’s testimony because the doctor refers them cases. No law firm we work with on cases would ever do this and if we found out they did, we’d stop working with them. You should clarify with the lawyer what they will and won’t charge for before you hire them.
Beyond that, note that it’s not legal to have liens on a work comp case with the exception of child support/maintenance court orders. A lien is a legal term that basically means that if you get a settlement, someone else has a right to it. In other words, in a car accident case, a doctor can put a lien on the settlement for their bill. In work comp cases, doctors can’t do that.
With respect to how a reimbursement should work, on the settlement contract it will have a line for the amount of the settlement, expenses (called petitioner’s costs), attorney fees and something called “other” that is rarely used. A typical case would say something like this:
Total Amount of Settlement: $50,000
Deduction Attorney Fees: $10,000
Deduction Petitoner’s Costs: $200
Deduction Other: $0
Amount Employee Will Receive: $39,800.00
The final thing to know is that the contract does provide the lawyer the right to go after you for expense reimbursement if the case isn’t successful. We’ve never been involved in a case where that happened and no reputable Illinois work comp attorney would do that in my opinion. But if it makes you feel more comfortable, ask the lawyer about that before signing up.
Lots of information here, but I get it can be confusing, especially if you haven’t dealt with a lawyer before. If you have any questions you can call us for free and in confidence at 312-346-5578.
