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.
What Rule 1.5 actually requires
Rule 1.5 of the Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct sets the baseline: a lawyer "shall not enter into an agreement for, charge, or collect an illegal or clearly excessive fee." This applies to both fixed and contingent fees, and reasonableness is assessed against factors including the time and labor required, the skill needed, the customary fee for similar work, the amount involved, and the attorney's experience.
A genuinely different rule for workers' compensation
Pennsylvania's Workers' Compensation Act generally caps attorney fees at 20% of a claimant's indemnity benefits — a hard statutory ceiling, unlike the open-ended reasonableness standard governing personal injury contingency fees. A workers' compensation judge approves the specific fee agreement between claimant and attorney as part of the process.
A limited exception in workers' comp cases
Pennsylvania's workers' compensation framework also allows a judge to award additional attorney fees against the employer in certain circumstances — specifically where the employer's contest of the claim is found to have been unreasonable. This operates as a separate mechanism from the ordinary 20% fee the claimant otherwise pays out of their own benefits.
No specific percentage written into law for personal injury
Beyond the reasonableness requirement, Pennsylvania sets no specific percentage ceiling for a personal injury contingency fee. The rate is negotiated privately between attorney and client, with one-third of the recovery being a commonly used figure in practice.