{"id":4955,"date":"2004-08-16T22:38:40","date_gmt":"2004-08-17T02:38:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/formerlyknownas\/2004\/08\/16\/to-reform-inform\/"},"modified":"2011-08-05T14:58:31","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T18:58:31","slug":"to-reform-inform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2004\/08\/16\/to-reform-inform\/","title":{"rendered":"to reform, inform"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a1975'><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n<P dir=\"ltr\" align=\"right\"><FONT face=\"Times New Roman,Times,Serif\"><FONT size=\"2\"><EM>contingency fee reform is<\/EM> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/ethicalesq\/pastduered.gif\" alt=\"past due\" \/><\/FONT><\/FONT><\/P><br \/>\n<P dir=\"ltr\"><FONT face=\"Times New Roman,Times,Serif\" size=\"2\">We interrupt our poetry for a pet project: <EM><STRONG>contingency fee reform<\/STRONG><\/EM>.&nbsp; Tomorrow, <\/FONT><A href=\"http:\/\/www.pointoflaw.com\/feature\/\"><FONT face=\"Times New Roman,Times,Serif\" size=\"2\">Point of Law<\/FONT><\/A><FONT face=\"Times New Roman,Times,Serif\" size=\"2\"> is beginning a&nbsp;<A href=\"http:\/\/www.pointoflaw.com\/feature\/index.php#417\">Featured Discussion<\/A>&nbsp;where &#8220;Two of the nation&#8217;s leading experts on legal ethics, <\/FONT><A href=\"http:\/\/www.pointoflaw.com\/masthead\/index.php#brickman\"><FONT face=\"Times New Roman,Times,Serif\" size=\"2\">Lester Brickman <\/FONT><\/A><FONT face=\"Times New Roman,Times,Serif\" size=\"2\">and <\/FONT><A href=\"http:\/\/www.pointoflaw.com\/masthead\/index.php#painter\"><FONT face=\"Times New Roman,Times,Serif\" size=\"2\">Richard Painter<\/FONT><\/A><FONT face=\"Times New Roman,Times,Serif\" size=\"2\">, will discuss potential ways to improve the legal system through reforming the way lawyers charge contingency fees.&#8221;<\/FONT><\/P><br \/>\n<UL><br \/>\n<LI><br \/>\n<DIV><FONT face=\"Times New Roman,Times,Serif\" size=\"2\">Despite it&#8217;s current haiku format, you&#8217;ll find much on the&nbsp;standard contingency fee&nbsp;at this website, as it has been an obsession of the Editor for years.&nbsp;&nbsp;In the posting <\/FONT><A href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2004\/01\/07#a482\"><FONT face=\"Times New Roman,Times,Serif\" size=\"2\">Suggestions for the ABA Contingency Fee Task Force<\/FONT><\/A><FONT face=\"Times New Roman,Times,Serif\" size=\"2\">&nbsp; (Jan. 7, 2004),&nbsp;there is&nbsp;a good summary of <EM>ethicalEsq<\/EM>&#8216;s position and arguments, with many links. <\/FONT><\/DIV><\/LI><\/UL><br \/>\n<P dir=\"ltr\"><FONT face=\"Times New Roman,Times,Serif\" size=\"2\">I&#8217;m no ethics professor or bigwig&nbsp;(I only play one on the net), but I think I know the very best and quickest way to achieve contingency fee reform: <FONT color=\"#ff0000\"><STRONG><EM>inform the public<\/EM><\/STRONG><\/FONT> &#8212; let consumers\/clients know (1) they can and <EM>should negotiate<\/EM> for a fair contingency fee; (2) [click <A href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/stories\/storyReader$1979\">here<\/A> for the&nbsp;rest of this posting, ]<\/FONT><\/P><br \/>\n<P dir=\"ltr\"><FONT face=\"Times New Roman,Times,Serif\" size=\"2\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/ethicalesq\/toomuch.gif\" alt=\"too much$\" \/>&nbsp; <\/FONT><\/P><br \/>\n<P><FONT face=\"Times New Roman,Times,Serif\"><FONT color=\"red\"><EM><STRONG>Update <\/STRONG><\/EM><\/FONT>(Aug. 18, 2004): At <A href=\"http:\/\/www.pointoflaw.com\/feature\/index.php#434\">Point of Law<\/A>, Prof. Richard Painter makes very good sense with his <STRONG>New American Rule for Contingency Fees<\/STRONG>, originally described&nbsp;in <A href=\"http:\/\/www.manhattan-institute.org\/cjr_1.pdf\">this article<\/A>.<\/FONT><\/P><br \/>\n<BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<P><FONT face=\"Times New Roman,Times,Serif\">&#8220;In essence, the New American rule requires the lawyer charging a contingent fee to say to the client in advance that &#x201C;my fee will be X% of any judgment or settlement in this case but will be no higher than Y dollars per hour.&#x201D; Under the proposal, the lawyer and client are free to agree on any numbers for X and Y that they want (subject of course to the existing provision in ethics rules and thus implied in the retainer agreement that a lawyer&#x2019;s fees must ultimately be reasonable). . . .&nbsp; [T]he lawyer who chooses to charge on a contingency must specify both X and Y. After the case is over, the client has the option of paying the lower of X or Y.<BR><\/FONT><\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE><\/BLOCKQUOTE><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>contingency fee reform is We interrupt our poetry for a pet project: contingency fee reform.&nbsp; Tomorrow, Point of Law is beginning a&nbsp;Featured Discussion&nbsp;where &#8220;Two of the nation&#8217;s leading experts on legal ethics, Lester Brickman and Richard Painter, will discuss potential ways to improve the legal system through reforming the way lawyers charge contingency fees.&#8221; Despite [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2926],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pre-06-2006"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kP1R-1hV","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4955"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13676,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4955\/revisions\/13676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}