Legal Question in Personal Injury in Indiana

There is no question posted. I am guessing that you want to know whether you can fire your lawyer and what your legal obilgations are if you do. In the person injury field, lawyers are retained based on a contigency basis,such as 33% or 40%. However, this is converted to an hourly fee when a discharge occurs. The amount of the hourly rate is based on that attorneys stature, experience and the complexity of your case. Since that can be thousands of dollars that most people do not have, the custom is that the discharged lawyer waits to be paid at the end of the case. The new lawyer usually honors the same contingency rate that the old one did and then pays the discharged lawyer out of the 33-40% fee that the new lawyer receives. This is fair since the new lawyer has the benefit of all of the work that the first one did and the client is not paying any more than he would have had he kept the initial attorney. For example lets say that there is a $1,000,000 settlement and there is a 40% fee agreement thus resulting in a fee of $400,000. The first lawyer worked 100 hours and based on his stature, experience etc is to earn $350 an hour. He is entitled to a $35,000.00 fee. The second lawyer would receive $365,000 after paying the first lawyer $35,000.