No percentage cap
Montana imposes no statutory percentage cap on contingency fees in personal injury or medical malpractice cases. The governing standard is reasonableness, under Montana Rule of Professional Conduct 1.5. Most contingency fees range from 33.3% to 40% of the total recovery.
A sliding-scale proposal that never passed
A 1987 bill would have capped contingency fees on a declining scale — 40% of the first $25,000 recovered, 33⅓% of the next $75,000, 30% of the next $150,000, and lower rates above that. The bill was tabled in the House Judiciary Committee and never became law; no such schedule exists in current Montana practice.
What happens if a client fires their attorney mid-case
In Campbell v. Bozeman Investors of Duluth (1998), the Montana Supreme Court addressed a personal injury client who fired her contingency-fee attorneys partway through the case and later settled with new counsel. The court held the client had the right to end the representation, but confirmed the original attorneys could still recover the reasonable value of the work they'd already substantially performed — not the full contingency percentage, but not nothing either.