How much will it cost to hire a Los Angeles sexual harassment attorney?
In most instances, sexual harassment attorneys in Los Angeles and in the surrounding areas work on a contingency fee basis, which means that if they don't make you money, they're not going to take any fee for what the work that they do. So, if you win, you have to pay a certain percentage of your fee to your attorney.
If you don't win, if you don't recover anything on your case, then you pay nothing out of pocket. That's how it typically should work.
If there are people who are trying to charge you on an hourly basis for a sexual harassment case in Los Angeles, chances are you probably don't have a very strong case to begin with.
What "contingency" actually covers
A contingency fee means the attorney's cut comes out of whatever you recover, not your bank account. Most cases also involve separate costs — filing fees, deposition costs, expert fees — that a reputable firm typically fronts and only gets repaid if you recover money, so you're still not paying anything to get started.
California and federal employment laws, including FEHA, are written so that an employee who wins can often make the employer pay a share of attorney's fees. That's a big reason contingency arrangements are standard in this area — it lines up the attorney's incentive with actually winning the case, not billing hours.
What to ask before you sign
Ask what percentage the firm takes, whether that changes if the case settles instead of going to trial, and who covers costs if the case doesn't succeed. A trustworthy attorney walks through all of this in a free initial consultation, before you sign anything.
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