A reasonableness-only state for fees
Compare Virginia to a state like New York, which applies a hard statutory sliding scale to medical malpractice attorney fees specifically. Virginia has no equivalent figure anywhere in its rules — the fee simply must be reasonable under Rule 1.5, as confirmed in a real 2023 court dispute over a one-third fee split.
A genuinely aggressive damages cap, with no fee cap to match
Virginia's malpractice damages cap is unusual in its own right — rather than limiting only noneconomic damages, as most capped states do, it caps the total of all categories combined, currently $2.70 million and rising toward $3 million by 2031-2032. Either way, that damages question says nothing about what the attorney can charge on whatever is actually recovered. The two questions are governed by entirely separate rules.
Two separate things that sound related but aren't
It's worth being clear that Virginia's malpractice damages cap limits what a plaintiff can recover from the provider. The attorney's own percentage fee remains governed entirely by Rule 1.5's reasonableness standard, untouched by how the damages cap question plays out in a specific case.
A real precedent for fee caps, in a different context
Virginia has shown willingness to cap contingency fees before — but only in one narrow context. A 2018 bill would have limited contingency fees paid to outside counsel the state retains for its own litigation; the governor vetoed it. That episode concerned government-retained counsel, not the fees injured plaintiffs pay their own personal injury attorneys, which have never faced a statutory cap.