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.
A genuinely broad rule, not a narrow carve-out
Michigan Court Rule 8.121 covers claims for personal injury or wrongful death based on another party's alleged conduct, and — by its own express terms — no-fault benefits claims as well. That's a notably wider net than most states cast: elsewhere, a statutory fee cap usually targets medical malpractice specifically, leaving ordinary car accident and slip-and-fall cases unregulated. Michigan applies the same one-third ceiling across essentially all of them.
A ceiling, not a mandatory rate
The one-third figure is a maximum, not a required rate. The rule explicitly preserves an attorney's ability to contract for a lower percentage, and separately requires the attorney to advise the client, before signing, that other fee arrangements — hourly or per diem billing, for instance — exist as an option, even though the attorney isn't obligated to offer them.
Resolving a related medical lien is usually included
A practical detail worth knowing: Michigan ethics guidance treats the work of resolving a medical lien tied to the same personal injury claim as part of the original contingent fee, not a separate, additional charge — this has "customarily been included in the legal services performed by a personal injury attorney," per State Bar of Michigan guidance.
What happens if the ceiling is exceeded
Collecting more than one-third isn't simply open to a reasonableness challenge the way an excessive fee might be elsewhere — under MCR 8.121, it's automatically treated as a "clearly excessive fee" under the Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct, a more direct and less forgiving standard than the general reasonableness tests used in most states.