From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishcontingency feecontingency feeSCLan amount of money that a lawyer in the US will be paid only if the person they are advising wins in court → contingency
Examples from the Corpus
contingency fee• His home, law firm and love life were all sacrificed to the case which was brought on a contingency fee basis.• A substantial percentage of these lawsuits are brought by attorneys working on a contingency fee basis.• Californians also turned down Proposition 202, a proposal to limit lawyers' contingency fees and encourage early settlement of lawsuits.• Voters rejected measures to ban most lawsuits resulting from car accidents, limit shareholder lawsuits and slash lawyers' contingency fees.• A review of contingency fees was undertaken and research on commercial legal expenses insurance was published.• It recommended that the prohibition on contingency fees and other forms of incentive should be re-examined.• A standard contingency fee is 33 percent to 40 percent.• The contingency fee usually sorts out the questionable cases to begin with.From Longman Business Dictionarycontingency feeconˈtingency ˌfee (also contingent fee) [countable] LAW when a lawyer is paid a percentage of any DAMAGEs (=money for loss or injury) that they win for their clientIn settling a personal injury case, a contingency fee contract with his client gave Mr Goodman one-third of the $3 million award. → fee 