A reasonableness-only state for fees
Compare Pennsylvania to a state like New York, which applies a hard statutory sliding scale to medical malpractice attorney fees specifically. Pennsylvania has no equivalent figure anywhere in its rules for any type of personal injury claim, including malpractice — the fee simply can't be clearly excessive under Rule 1.5, assessed case by case.
Two separate things that sound related but aren't
It's worth being clear that Pennsylvania's constitutional ban on capping damages against private defendants has nothing to do with attorney fees. Article III, Section 18 of the Pennsylvania Constitution addresses what a plaintiff can recover from a defendant; the attorney's own percentage fee remains governed entirely by Rule 1.5's reasonableness standard, a completely separate question.
A distinctive combination
Many states that leave personal injury attorney fees uncapped still allow some form of damages cap, at least for medical malpractice specifically. Pennsylvania's combination — no fee cap, and a constitutional-level prohibition on capping damages against private defendants — is distinctive precisely because both protections run in the plaintiff's favor at once, for different reasons and under different legal authorities.
A real cap, but only for workers' comp
Pennsylvania's one genuine statutory fee cap sits in a different corner of the law entirely: workers' compensation attorney fees are generally capped at 20% of a claimant's benefits. This is a completely separate framework from personal injury contingency fees, worth distinguishing clearly if a case involves both a workplace injury and a third-party personal injury claim arising from the same incident.