Contingency Fee Support

An overview of planned work to support contingency billing in LeanLaw

Fred Willerup avatar
Written by Fred Willerup
Updated over a week ago

LeanLaw is planning better support for handling contingency cases. This will be rolled out in phases as described below. As we roll this out, the specifics might change based on client feedback.

Phase 1 - Basic Support

The following will be implemented in LeanLaw:

  • A new matter type "Contingency" that is set when creating a matter (the matter types allowed will be "Internal", "Pro Bono", "Hourly", "Fixed" and "Contingency".

  • Contingency matters will have a field that allow setting a percentage for the contingency fee

  • By default, time tracked for contingency fee matters will be considered not billed hourly. So time tracked will not appear on the Ready to Bill screen.

  • A new report called "Contingency Report" will show "work in progress" (hours, hourly value and expense amounts) for contingency fee matters. 

Phase 2 - Settlement Support

This boils down a page for contingency matters where you can see the state of the matter, and do operations on it for settlement purposes:

  • The status of "Work in Progress", Expenses, and Trust transactions

  • Deposit funds to the trust account

  • Create an invoice with the settlement fee for the law firm

  • Optional interest added to expenses on settlement invoices

  • Pay settlement invoice out of trust fund

  • Disburse funds to others (vendors, the client)

  • Mark the case as closed

Phase 3 - Lien Support

LeanLaw will allow keeping track of Liens for the contingency matters which are expenses/financial commitments yet to be paid against the case. Liens are paid during settlement.

  • On the contingency matter page, there is a list of Liens that can be created, removed, edited. Liens include vendor information, a description and an amount.

  • Option to pay settlement based on a lien item

  • Contingency Report will include information about the liens for each matter

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