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 ruling with implications well beyond workers' comp
In Injured Workers Association of Utah v. State (2016), the Utah Supreme Court struck down a Labor Commission fee schedule that set workers' comp attorney fees at 25% of the first $25,000 of an award, 20% of the next $25,000, and 10% above that, capped at $18,590 overall. The court's reasoning wasn't narrow: it held that the Utah Constitution gives the Utah Supreme Court exclusive authority to govern the practice of law, including attorney fees, and that the legislature simply cannot delegate that authority to a state agency.
Why the court declined to impose a replacement
Rather than adopting a new fee schedule, the court reasoned that a rigid cap had actually made it harder for injured workers to find representation, since attorneys were "economically unable or unwilling" to take on cases once the cap limited their potential fee. The court concluded that leaving fees to private negotiation — backed by the attorney disciplinary process to catch any genuinely excessive fee — better served injured claimants.
The same logic applies to personal injury fees generally
While that specific case concerned workers' compensation, its separation-of-powers reasoning applies to attorney fee regulation generally in Utah — consistent with the fact that ordinary personal injury contingency fees have never faced a legislative percentage cap either, governed instead by Rule 1.5's reasonableness standard.
What a Utah agreement must include
Rule 1.5(c) requires a contingency fee agreement to be in writing and to specify the percentage and how expenses are handled. One-third of the recovery for a pre-litigation settlement, rising to 40% or more if the case goes to trial, is a commonly used structure in practice.