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 real bill that would have capped fees by formula
HB 1748, introduced in the 1995 session, would have barred an attorney from contracting for or collecting a contingency fee above a sliding-scale schedule in any fault-based personal injury or property damage case. The bill included a safety valve: an attorney who believed in good faith that the schedule failed to provide adequate compensation due to extraordinary circumstances could petition the court for more, with the court then weighing the same kind of reasonableness factors found in RPC 1.5.
A proposal that never became law
HB 1748 did not pass. Washington has never enacted a statutory percentage cap on contingency fees for ordinary personal injury cases — the reasonableness standard of RPC 1.5 has remained the sole governing rule.
No fixed formula, just factors to weigh
RPC 1.5 doesn't supply a numeric formula for reasonableness. It lists factors — the time and labor required, the fee customarily charged in the locality for similar services, the experience and ability of the attorney, and whether the fee is fixed or contingent — leaving the final figure to case-by-case judgment rather than a statutory percentage.
A commonly used figure in practice
One-third of the recovery is a commonly cited figure in Washington personal injury practice. The rate remains negotiable between attorney and client, subject always to the RPC 1.5 reasonableness standard.