Before signing a contingency agreement, ask who signs the letters, how many files that attorney carries, whether the case is being referred out, and when the firm last tried a case.
A contingency fee agreement rarely names the person who will do the work. It names a firm, sets a percentage, and describes costs, but the paragraph identifying which attorney reads the medical records, drafts the demand, and argues with the adjuster usually does not exist. That gap is not an oversight. Personal injury work spans solo practitioners who carry twenty files and advertising operations that intake thousands a year and route most of them elsewhere, and both sign the same one-page retainer. The questions below are the ones that separate the two before the signature, not after.
1. Who signs the letters, and who picks up the phone?
Ask for two names: the attorney whose signature goes on correspondence, and the person you will actually reach on a Tuesday afternoon with a question about a bill. In most functioning firms those are different people, and that is fine. Case managers, paralegals, and legal assistants do enormous amounts of competent work, and a good one is worth more to a claim than a distracted attorney. What matters is whether the attorney has read the file at all. Ask when that attorney last looked at your records, and listen for whether the answer is a date or a reassurance.
2. How many open files does that attorney carry right now?
The number is knowable, the firm tracks it, and a straight answer tells you more than any review site. There is no single correct figure, because a desk full of soft-tissue rear-end collisions is not comparable to a desk holding four disputed-liability cases with competing experts. What you are testing is whether anyone will say a number at all. A firm that answers with a range, explains how files are distributed across attorneys, and describes who covers what when someone is in trial is describing an actual system. Vagueness here tends to predict vagueness later, when the offer arrives and you want an opinion.
3. Is this firm keeping the case, or sending it somewhere else?
Referral arrangements are legal in most states, generally require your written consent, and often serve clients well, because the firm that signed you may not handle your kind of injury. The problem is silence. Ask directly whether the file will stay in the building, and if not, which firm receives it, how the fee splits, and whether the referring firm keeps any responsibility for the outcome. The Federal Trade Commission oversees how legal services are advertised to consumers, and the advertisement you responded to is not always the office that will litigate. Get the answer before signing, in writing, rather than discovering it in a substitution notice.
4. When did someone here last try a case to verdict?
Adjusters keep informal track of which firms file suit and which settle everything on the courthouse steps, and that reputation prices your claim as surely as your medical bills do. So ask for specifics: the last three cases tried, the year, the county, the result. A firm that tries cases will answer quickly and probably at length, because trial lawyers enjoy the subject. A firm that has not seen a jury in years may still be an excellent settlement shop, and plenty of claims never need more than that. You are simply deciding which kind you are hiring, deliberately, instead of by accident.
5. What happens on the day the offer is too low?
Push the conversation to the decision point that actually matters. If the insurer's best number sits well under what the file is worth, who evaluates it, who recommends filing suit, and does that recommendation come from the attorney or from a settlement coordinator working a queue? Ask whether the firm files suit itself or associates in trial counsel, and what that does to the fee percentage, since many agreements step up from a third to forty percent once litigation begins. A firm comfortable with the question will walk you through the arithmetic without being asked twice.
None of this requires suspicion, and asking does not insult anyone worth hiring. Firms that work their own files answer these questions in about ten minutes and often volunteer more than you asked, because the answers are the product. Write the responses down, keep them with the retainer, and compare them against what happens in month four.