Why Plaintiffs' Attorneys Use Contingent and Defense Attorneys Fixed Fee Contracts

Emons, Winand; Fluet, Claude (2016). Why Plaintiffs' Attorneys Use Contingent and Defense Attorneys Fixed Fee Contracts. International review of law and economics, 47, pp. 16-23. Elsevier 10.1016/j.irle.2016.03.004

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Victims want to collect damages from injurers. Cases differ with respect to the judgment. Attorneysobserve the expected judgment, clients do not. Victims need an attorney to sue; defense attorneys reducethe probability that the plaintiff prevails. Plaintiffs’ attorneys offer contingent fees providing incentivesto proceed with strong and drop weak cases. By contrast, defense attorneys work for fixed fees underwhich they accept all cases. Since the defense commits to fight all cases, few victims sue in the first place.We thus provide an explanation for the fact that in the US virtually all plaintiffs use contingency whiledefendants tend to rely exclusively on fixed fees.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences > Department of Economics

UniBE Contributor:

Emons, Winand, Fluet, Claude

Subjects:

300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 330 Economics

ISSN:

0144-8188

Publisher:

Elsevier

Language:

English

Submitter:

Dino Collalti

Date Deposited:

28 Jun 2017 15:27

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 15:01

Publisher DOI:

10.1016/j.irle.2016.03.004

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.93172

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/93172

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