Fees & Costs

One of the best legal bargains around, the attorney’s fee in your workers’ compensation case is set by State law at a maximum of 15%-18% of certain benefits. The fee is usually only 15% of the permanent disability awarded. Fees for recovery of penalty money may be slightly higher. All fees must be ordered approved by a Workers’ Compensation Administrative Law Judge.

The fee is a contingency fee. No fees are ever paid in advance, and if you recover nothing, you owe no fee to the attorney.

If your attorney withdraws from representing you, or if you withdraw from representation, you will still be responsible for the fee amount found by a workers’ compensation judge to be the fair value of any work the attorney did in your case. However, such a fee may only be collected out of benefits actually awarded to you.

Unless you and your attorney have entered into a separate written fee agreement for representation in other matters, your attorney will only represent you regarding the workers’ compensation benefits for those work injuries that you have specifically disclosed to your attorney. Your attorney will not represent you in any other matters, including workers’ compensation benefits for injuries that you have failed to disclose to your attorney, actions against your employer for serious and willful misconduct, and/or Labor Code §132a (nondiscrimination policy) violations, or any third party lawsuits, labor law matters, or disability, health insurance, retirement, unemployment, or other benefits. If you wish to pursue any of these other matters, it will be your sole responsibility to either make arrangements with your attorney to represent you by way of a separate written retainer or agreement or to make sure they are handled in a timely fashion. Many of these matters have a one-year statute of limitations.

Paperless Law Office:

Your case file will be in electronic format and available to you in electronic format as pdf files. You will always receive documents from this office electronically.