A Debate on Contingent Fees

Jim Copland and I debate contingent fees at PointofLaw.com.  I was pleased with this statement of my position:

If a lawyer and her client want to contract in Lira what business is
it of the state to interfere? If the lawyer and client agree on an
incentive plan, why should that be regulated? Do we want to regulate
contingent fees in other areas? A money-back guarantee, for example, is
a contingent fee – you pay only if the product is a winner. A tip is a
contingent fee – you pay only if the service was good.

True, not all contracts should be respected – we don’t enforce
contracts against the public interest – nevertheless, my spider-sense
starts to tingle whenever reformers of any stripe try to abrogate
private contracting.