What is in the Retainer Agreement for a Personal Injury Lawyer?
Summary
Overall, the retainer agreement captures the relationship between the client and the lawyer, highlighting the need for effective communication. It ensures that the client will not be charged if the case is not won.
Full Transcript
A retainer agreement is the document that people sign when they decide to hire a lawyer. What the retainer agreement does is it sets forth what are the obligations of the lawyer, what are the obligations and responsibilities of the clients.
It makes it very clear that we're not going to charge you anything for handling your case if we do not win your case. So that's in writing, and that's a contract, and it's something that's enforceable. But the retainer agreement is very explicit as to what the lawyer is going to do on your behalf.
It does talk about what it is that you have to do. One of the most important things that clients need to do in the litigation process is to be available and to communicate with the lawyer and to make yourself available so that we can talk to you about things and questions that we might have during the litigation process.
The defendants are going to serve what's called discovery on my clients and what that discovery is. There are a bunch of questions about the incident, a bunch of questions about your medical history, a bunch of questions about people that may know something about the incident that you have brought a lawsuit on.
The lawyers, of course, don't have the answers to those questions. So we have to communicate with the client and to get those answers. We sit down with you and have a dialogue with you, and you help us fill out those documents, then you get a chance to review them to make sure that they're accurate and all of that.
The retainer agreement is an agreement that really does capture the relationship between the client and the lawyer. What are our responsibilities and obligations and what do we expect from the client? And usually what we expect from the client is just communication.
Final Thoughts
Many personal injury lawyers, including myself, will give a free initial consultation so you can determine if I am someone you feel comfortable sharing sensitive information with, and working with for at least several months to as long as a few years.