The core promise: no recovery, no fee
A contingency fee means the attorney's fee is contingent — dependent — on actually winning or settling the case. If there's no recovery at all, the client generally owes no attorney fee, regardless of how much work went into the case.
The tiers, worked out
Under Connecticut General Statutes § 52-251c, each portion of the recovery is taxed at a different rate, then added together: 33.3% of the first $300,000, 25% of the next $300,000, 20% of the next $300,000, 15% of the next $300,000, and 10% of anything above $1.2 million. So a $1,000,000 settlement isn't simply 33.3% across the board — it's $100,000 (first tier) + $75,000 (second tier) + $60,000 (third tier) + $15,000 (the remaining $100,000 of the fourth tier), for a total fee of $250,000 — an effective rate of 25%, not 33.3%.
The bigger the recovery, the lower the effective rate
This is the real point of the sliding scale: as a settlement grows, a larger share of it falls into the lower-rate tiers, pulling the blended, effective percentage down. On a $5,000,000 recovery, the effective rate drops to roughly 13%, even though the statute's top rate is 33.3%.
It's the exclusive method of payment, with real teeth
The statute states that the contingency fee, calculated this way, is the exclusive method of payment for the attorney's services in a covered case — and it has a real enforcement mechanism: an attorney who charges above the schedule without a valid, compliant waiver is entitled to no fee at all, not just a reduced one.
The narrow exception: a written waiver
A client can waive the sliding scale in writing when the case is substantially complex, unique, or different from an ordinary claim — but even then, the total fee can never exceed 33⅓% of the recovery, the same ceiling that applies to the very first tier of the standard schedule.