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 case about double-billing paralegal time
In a reported disciplinary matter before the Wyoming Supreme Court, an attorney was found to have violated Rule 1.5(a) by separately charging for paralegal time on legal services that should generally have been covered by the contingency percentage itself — effectively billing twice for the same underlying work.
A real case about misrepresented travel expenses
In a separate disciplinary matter, an attorney improperly charged personal expenses — airfare, hotels, rental cars, and meals — to client matters, representing that these costs related to the cases the attorney was working on, when they did not. The attorney agreed this conduct violated the Rules of Professional Conduct.
What these cases show
Together, these cases illustrate that Wyoming's reasonableness standard isn't just about the headline percentage — it extends to what else gets added to a bill alongside the contingency fee, including paralegal time and expense reimbursements that should already be covered or that were never genuinely incurred for the case.
A formal path for disputing a fee
Beyond ordinary bar discipline, Wyoming offers something more specific: a client or attorney who disputes a contingent fee's reasonableness can request a formal review by the Committee on Resolution of Fee Disputes of the Wyoming State Bar, which weighs the usual factors — time required, customary local rates, and the genuine contingency of the compensation — in a structured proceeding.