A reasonableness-only state
Compare New Mexico to a state like Illinois, which caps medical malpractice attorney fees at a flat 33⅓%, written directly into statute. New Mexico has no equivalent figure anywhere in its rules — the State Bar's own ethics committee has said it cannot even speculate on what an upper limit might be, deferring entirely to case-by-case reasonableness review under Rule 16-105.
Two separate things that sound related but aren't
It's worth being clear that New Mexico's Medical Malpractice Act damages cap — the two-track $6 million / $1 million structure — has nothing to do with attorney fees. That cap limits what a patient can recover from a health care provider; the attorney's own percentage fee remains governed entirely by Rule 16-105's reasonableness standard, untouched by whatever the damages cap happens to be in a given case.
A court system that actively polices fee caps — just not this one
A 2025 New Mexico Supreme Court ruling striking down a 1987 statutory cap on appellate attorney fees shows the state's courts taking an active role in defining the limits of legislative authority over attorney compensation. That specific ruling addressed appeals, not personal injury contingency fees at the trial level — but it's a useful data point for understanding how New Mexico's courts approach the broader question of who gets to set attorney fee rules in the first place.
A genuinely different framework for workers' compensation
New Mexico does impose a real statutory fee cap in one adjacent area: workers' compensation claims, capped at $22,500 per single accidental injury. That's an entirely separate legal framework from personal injury tort claims, worth distinguishing clearly if a case involves both a workplace injury and a third-party personal injury claim arising from the same incident.