The 2025 proposal: a modest cap on the first $15,000
House Bill 439, introduced in 2025, would have capped contingency fees in any delictual (tort) action at 10% for the first $15,000 of recovery, with the remainder of a larger settlement or award unaffected by that specific limit. The bill also would have made the contingency fee percentage legally "discoverable" and voided confidentiality clauses attempting to keep it hidden.
It passed the House, then stalled
The bill cleared the full Louisiana House of Representatives by a 57–30 vote in late April 2025. It moved to the Senate, was referred to the Judiciary A committee, and did not advance further before the session's business concluded — leaving it unenacted.
A broader 2024 proposal also failed
The 2025 bill wasn't Louisiana's first attempt. A 2024 measure, Senate Bill 458, proposed a considerably broader cap: 25% of total compensation in an ordinary case, and in a medical liability claim specifically, 25% of the first $250,000 recovered plus 10% of anything above that. That bill tied compliance to legal malpractice insurance coverage requirements, but it, too, did not become law.
Today: no cap, despite two recent attempts
Because neither the 2024 nor the 2025 bill was enacted, Louisiana's current rule remains the absence of a specific fee-cap statute — attorney fees in every type of personal injury case are governed solely by the general reasonableness standard of Rule 1.5(a) of the Louisiana Rules of Professional Conduct. Given two separate legislative attempts in consecutive years, it's reasonable to expect the issue to resurface in a future session.