Arizona: no statutory cap for ordinary clients
Arizona imposes no statutory cap on the contingency fee percentage in general personal injury or medical malpractice cases. The rate is set by private agreement, subject to a general reasonableness standard under ER 1.5 rather than a fixed legal ceiling.
A real minority of states do cap fees
Several other states take a different approach, setting a hard statutory ceiling on what a personal injury attorney can charge. Michigan caps contingent fees at 33.33% across all personal injury cases. Connecticut uses a declining percentage scale, with the allowed rate shrinking as the recovered amount grows larger. These represent a genuine minority approach nationally — most states, like Arizona, leave the rate to negotiation.
Arizona's one real exception — and it's not about you
Arizona does limit contingency fees in one specific context: when the state itself hires a private attorney on a contingency basis to litigate on the state's behalf, the arrangement requires the attorney general to make a written determination that it's cost-effective and in the public interest, posted publicly, with limits on the aggregate fees recoverable. This is a government-contracting transparency rule — it has no bearing on an ordinary consumer's personal injury case.
A reasonableness standard still applies, twice over
The absence of a hard cap doesn't mean any percentage is automatically acceptable. ER 1.5 requires the fee to be reasonable at the outset, and under In re Swartz, 141 Ariz. 266 (1984), Arizona courts can revisit that reasonableness again once the case concludes, based on the work actually performed and the results actually obtained.