Quoted Thirty-Three Percent on a Civil Assault Claim? The Base Matters More Than the Rate

A contingency fee is quoted as a percentage, and the percentage is the least interesting number in the agreement. Two firms can both say a third and arrive at figures thousands of dollars apart, because the rate is applied to different bases, at different stages, with costs handled in opposite order. It works the way a listing price works in a home sale: the headline figure is the one people repeat, and the closing statement is the one that governs. In a civil claim arising from a sexual assault, usually brought against an institution rather than only the individual, that gap is where the money sits.

The base, not the rate

Ask what the percentage is multiplied by, and insist on an answer in a sentence you could read aloud. A fee taken against the gross recovery is computed on the full settlement figure before a single expense comes out. A fee taken against the net is computed after case costs are reimbursed to the firm. Same rate, different arithmetic, and on a case carrying substantial expert work the difference is not small. Neither structure is improper, and reputable firms use both, but only one of them is what you assumed when you nodded at the number.

Ten years ago this was handled more loosely in a lot of engagement letters, often in a single clause that said costs would be deducted without specifying whether they came off before or after the fee was figured. Written fee agreements are now the norm in contingency work, state bar rules have tightened around disclosure, and the better letters set out a worked example with hypothetical dollars. If the letter in front of you does not include that example, a firm willing to take the case will usually prepare one, and that request alone tells you a great deal about how the relationship will run.

Tiers, and who flips the switch

Most agreements in this area are staged rather than flat. A lower percentage applies if the matter resolves on a pre-suit demand, a higher one once a complaint is filed, a higher one still if the case is tried, and sometimes another if an appeal follows. The staging is reasonable, since the work genuinely multiplies, but the practical question is who decides when the case crosses a line. Filing is a step that cannot be taken back, and it moves your fee tier on the same day it starts the clock on discovery.

So get the mechanics in writing. Does the tier change on filing, on service, on the first deposition, or on a scheduled trial date? Does a mediated settlement reached two weeks after filing sit in the pre-suit tier or the litigation tier? When you sit down with a sexual assault attorney to review the engagement letter, that sequence is worth more attention than the rate itself, because it is the part you will live inside for a year or two. Firms that litigate these cases regularly answer it quickly, having been asked before.

Costs, advances, and the lines a client never sees

Case costs are separate from fees and they behave differently. Court filing charges, deposition transcripts, record retrieval, retained experts on institutional security or standard of care, treating-provider narrative reports, travel, mediator fees. In a contingency arrangement the firm advances these, which is one of the quiet advantages of the structure, and the agreement says whether you owe them back if the case does not recover. That single clause is the one most often misremembered later. Read it, and read whether interest accrues on advanced costs, because some agreements provide for it and many do not.

What changed over the last decade is scale and visibility. Expert work in cases against hotels, employers, schools, and healthcare systems has gotten heavier, digital evidence now runs to vendor invoices for preservation and review, and third-party litigation funding exists in a way it barely did before, which introduces a financing cost that has to appear somewhere on the closing statement. The improvement in practice is that itemization is expected now. A monthly or quarterly cost ledger, rather than one summary line at the end, is a reasonable thing to ask for at signing and an awkward thing to ask for afterward.

Liens, subrogation, and the taxes that moved in 2018

Your fee is not the only claim on the recovery. Health insurers assert subrogation rights, Medicare and Medicaid have statutory recovery interests, hospitals in many states can perfect liens, and a crime victim compensation award may carry a repayment obligation. All of that is resolved out of the same pot, and the order is unforgiving: liens get negotiated before funds disburse, not after, because money paid out to a client and spent is money the firm cannot claw back to satisfy a perfected lien. Ask who negotiates the reductions and whether that work is inside the fee.

Then the tax question, which genuinely looks different than it did ten years ago. The IRS is responsible for how settlement and judgment proceeds are characterized, and the long-standing distinction is between recoveries on account of physical injury or physical sickness and recoveries for emotional distress standing alone. The 2017 tax law suspended miscellaneous itemized deductions, so the older strategy of reporting a gross recovery and deducting the attorney's fee below the line stopped working for the categories that relied on it. Allocation language in a settlement agreement therefore carries weight it did not carry before, and it is drafted once.

What changed about the decision itself

The surrounding law moved too, which changes what the fee is being quoted against in a broader sense. Many states have extended limitations periods for civil claims arising from sexual assault, and several opened revival windows for claims that had previously expired, which means matters that no firm would have evaluated a decade ago now get evaluated on their merits. Institutional defendants and their insurers have correspondingly more structured responses. Consequently a first meeting today is more likely to produce a real assessment of timing, venue, and the identity of the solvent defendant than a conversation about whether a claim exists at all.

That shift favors the client who comes in organized. Dates, names, prior reports to an employer or a campus office, medical and counseling records, any written communication, and the name of every insurer who has paid a related bill. A firm can build the fee discussion around a real case once it can see the shape of one, and the quoted structure tends to get more specific and more favorable as the uncertainty comes down.

Before you sign, get three things on paper in dollars: the base the percentage applies to, the event that moves you from one tier to the next, and who carries advanced costs if there is no recovery. Those answers are cheap to obtain at the start and expensive to revisit at disbursement, and a firm that produces them in writing on the first pass has told you something useful about how it will handle the rest.