We know that price is one of the most important factors you have in mind when you make a decision to hire a lawyer.
Each year, hundreds of people come to us looking for help with their disability claims. They all ask us for quotes or estimates — and many folks will ask questions about price in the first few minutes of our conversations.
We get it. Everyone wants to know about pricing. You need to be sure you’re making the right decision, and your finances are a mess because you have to stop working.
It’s hard to provide one-size-fits-all information about cost because there are so many variables that can influence it.
Below, you’ll find realistic price ranges and estimates based on real-world scenarios and current clients.
What are the types of fee arrangements?
We offer two fee arrangements: 1) Contingency Fee and 2) Flat Fee. The contingency fee is the most popular choice for most of our clients.
Contingency fee
A contingency fee is a way of paying a lawyer based on a successful outcome. This means there are no upfront charges, and you will only pay us if we win your claim. Winning means we get your claim approved or negotiate a one-time financial settlement. The contingency fee percentage is 25% to 33% for most claims but 40% for worker’s compensation claims.
With a claim approval, the benefits provider will make a one-time payment for past benefits owed to the date of approval. Then, going forward, the benefits provider will pay you a monthly benefit, usually to age 65. Our contingency fee will only apply to the one-time payment for past benefits owed. You keep 100% of all future monthly payments.
With a one-time financial settlement, the benefits provider makes a one time payment to close your claim for good. This payment can include money for past and future benefits. Such lump-sum settlements only happen in the context of lawsuits against insurance companies. The contingency fee percentage will apply to the entire settlement. However, these settlements will usually include extra money to pay toward your legal fees and disbursements.
Flat fee
A flat fee is a way of paying a lawyer a fixed price for a service. You know how much it will cost in advance, so there are no surprises. We break the flat fees down by the stage of your claim. So, there will be a series of flat fees payable at each stage of the claim. That way if you decide to stop your case, you don’t have to pay the fees for future stages.
For CPP disability and workers’ compensation claims, the typical stages are 1) application, 2) appeal, and 3) hearing. For long-term disability insurance claims, the stages are: 1) application; 2) internal appeal; 3) filing lawsuit and document discovery; 4) attending mediation; 5) preparing for trial; 6) attending trial.
Flat fees are not dependent on a successful outcome. You pay them, win or lose. The fee for each stage must be paid in advance before we start work on that step.
Paying at an hourly rate
We do not offer services where you can pay by the hour worked.
What does the typical client spend with Resolute Legal?
Depending on the type of case, the amount of work done, the risks involved, and the results achieved, clients spend between $0 and $200,000 (plus taxes) for legal representation. We understand this is a big range. I explain more below.
First, almost all of our fees are paid on a contingency fee basis.You only pay if we win. We get a percentage of the money you get. Our maximum contingency percentage is 33% (plus taxes and expenses) for most cases and 40% for some workers compensation cases.
A contingency fee means we only get paid if we win. While we have a success rate of around 90% overall, we don’t win every case. At least 10% of the time, we don’t get paid anything and have to pay back loans and interest for expenses paid on the case. Typically, the cases we lose have higher amounts of time billed and higher amounts of expenses than the average case. So, our losses have a disproportional financial impact on us. And if our win rate dropped below 80%, we could be out of business.
Second, we are one of the few law firms in Canada to offer a Satisfaction Guarantee. This means we give you 45 days after hiring us to walk away from our agreement with no charges or questions asked. So you don’t have to worry about making the wrong hiring decision.
Third, the amount you pay is different based on the type of case. We will review each type of case and explain the range and average fees. These fees and averages are based on our case results over the past two years:
CPP disability
For CPP disability, the range in legal fees is $0 to $20,000 (plus taxes), with the average client spending $6,000 (plus taxes and disbursements). This is a contingency fee, so you only pay if we win. The fee percentage is applied to the one-time retroactive payment from Service Canada. As the client, you the remainder of the retroactive payment and 100% of future monthly payments to age 65. The highest fees are paid in cases that go to one or more hearings at the Society Security Tribunal.
We cannot offer contingency fee representation in all CPP disability claims. This will happen when you will not get a retroactive payment, or the retroactive payment will be too small. In those cases, we can represent you on a flat fee basis.
Flat fees are paid, win or lose. They must also be paid in advance, and we hold the funds in our trust account until the work is completed. Flat fees are broken down according to milestones or stages of the case. For example, there are different flat fees for the application, appeals and tribunal hearing.
Flat fees start at $5,000 (plus taxes and disbursements) for applications and range from $5,000 to $12,500 (plus taxes and disbursements) for appeals and hearings.
Workers Compensation
Workers’ compensation cases are the most difficult to win. We have the lowest success rate with these cases. Therefore, we have a higher risk of getting paid $0 and having to pay back loans for expenses and interest. The legal fees for workers’ compensation range from $0 to $50,000 (plus taxes and disbursements), with the average client spending around $7,500 (plus taxes and disbursements).
All workers’ compensation cases start with a paid claim review. This costs $500 (plus taxes), and we review your worker’s compensation claim file. With this review, we can advise you on the issues for your appeal and the next steps needed. We can then also advise if we can represent you. If so, can we do it on a contingency fee or flat fee basis? If you choose not to hire us, there are no additional fees.
With a contingency fee arrangement, there are no up-front charges, and you only pay us if we win. Our contingency fee is 40% (plus taxes and disbursements). This higher percentage reflects the greater risk associated with all workers’ compensation appeals. However, this contingency percentage only applies to past benefits recovered. You keep 100% of all monthly payments going forward.
Our flat fees start at $5,000 (plus taxes and disbursements) for workers’ compensation applications and range from $10,000 to $15,000 (plus taxes and disbursements) for appeals and hearings. Flat fees are divided into the stages of application, appeals, and tribunal hearings. You must pay the fee for each stage in advance.
Long-term disability and life insurance
Long-term disability and life insurance cases have the widest range in costs. They also have the highest financial risks for the firm because we have to invest more time and money than other types of disability claims. Legal fees range from $0 to $210,000 (plus taxes and disbursements), with the average client spending around $16,000 (plus taxes). Clients only pay a fee if we are successful in negotiating a settlement or getting the insurance company to approve the LTD claim. If your claim is approved, our fee does not apply to any future monthly payments clients get to age 65.
With long-term disability and life insurance cases, clients will usually get a legal fee reimbursement from the insurance company for 5% to 60% of the legal fee, so the average net legal fee ends up being less than $16,000 (plus taxes). The amount of the legal fee reimbursement varies widely based on your province, with Ontario having the highest reimbursements and Atlantic Canada having the lowest reimbursements. With long-term disability and life insurance claims, we offer a fair fee guarantee. It is common for us to reduce the fee percentage down from 33% when it is necessary to ensure the legal fee is fair and reasonable according to your province’s legal fee regulations.
We also offer flat fee pricing on long-term disability claims. Flat fees must be paid in full in advance regardless of success. Flat fees start at $7,500 for basic applications and range from $7,500 to $15,000 for appeals and hearings. Depending on the stage of litigation, flat fees for litigation can range from $15,000 to $25,000.
Disability Tax Credit
For disability tax credit matters, we typically only represent people when their appeal gets to the Tax Court of Canada. However, if you are a client with us for another disability claim, we may handle your Disability Tax Credit Application and first appeal at no additional charge. We don’t handle disability tax credit cases on a contingency fee. Rather, we charge a fixed fee of $10,00 to $15,000, depending on the case’s complexity. This fee is payable win or lose.
Multiple Cases
It is common for clients to work with us on multiple disability claims. This creates efficiencies in work, so we can often reduce fees overall. However, this would be dependent on the amount of work needed on each individual claim and whether the work can be transferred between cases.
One-time consultations
We provide one-time legal consultations to people who need specific legal advice on an issue. The cost of these consultations ranges from $249 to $949 (plus taxes), depending on the complexity of your issue and the time involved with the consultation.
Disability claim protection service
With our disability claim protection service, we represent you when your disability claim is approved, and the insurance company pays you benefits. You pay an annual subscription fee that starts at $2,500 plus taxes. However, this amount can increase or decrease each year based on the amount of work required. We also charge more if you have more than one insurance policy.
Does Resolute Legal negotiate the contingency fee percentages?
We don’t negotiate our contingency fee percentages up-front. Rather, we offer a fair fee guarantee, which means that we will reduce the contingency fee at the end of the case when it is necessary to ensure the fee charged is fair and reasonable. And, if you still don’t think the fee is fair, we guide you on how to have a court review or fee for fairness. The court has the power to reduce our fee to ensure it is fair and reasonable according to the rules for legal fees for your province. Our Fair Fee Guarantee also gives you 45 days to walk away from our fee agreement with no charges or questions asked.
Sometimes, even the maximum contingency fee does not result in a fee that is fair to us based on the work done and expenses we incurred. We lost money on these cases because the fee charged was less than what we had to pay our staff to work on the case. However, we can’t charge more than the maximum percentage. This is another risk with contingency fees and why we don’t negotiate a lower percentage up-front.
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