LAWYERLONG, This is rather old article but interesting

Law firms see rewards, give boost to contingency work

As law firms struggle to retain lucrative work in a sparse corporate market, a number are betting on contingency litigation as a way to squeeze more returns from their trial work.

At least three firms with significant local practices are strategically adding a certain percentage of contingency work to their portfolios: Fish & Richardson PC, Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo PC, and Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi LLP.

Long considered the mainstay of personal injury law, contingency legal work calls for a lawyer to collect a certain percentage if a client wins a case, a popular tool when the promise exists for lucrative jury awards.

For small businesses involved in patent or commercial litigation, contingency legal work can be a budget saver. Often, these businesses can't afford the hundreds of thousands of dollars — sometimes millions, depending on how long a case can drag — in traditional up-front costs associated with corporate representation. So, a few law firms are orienting their practices to contingency work or a hybrid of reduced hourly fees and a lower percentage of any jury award or settlement.

At Boston-based Mintz Levin, for example, litigation partner Paul Hayes was brought in for his patent-litigation prowess last October and to help set up a program for taking contingency cases in the field. Hayes said the 18-attorney patent-litigation department spends roughly 25 percent of its time on contingency cases. He expects that number to increase to as much as 35 percent in six months as a number of recently filed lawsuits move through the court system.

"Mintz has done a pretty good job of being entrepreneurial and appreciating that there's a market," Hayes said. "They're willing to take the risks and share the rewards."

Mintz normally bills at between $250 and $500 per hour for corporate representation, Hayes said.

The firm recruited Hayes and five other attorneys from Boston-based Weingarten, Schurgin, Gagnebin & Hayes LLP (now Weingarten, Schurgin, Gagnebin & Lebovici LLP) to start its patent-litigation practice last year, Hayes said. In 1998, Hayes started taking a limited number of cases on contingency at Weingarten, and two years ago, he struck gold in a federal patent-infringement case in Virginia. General Technology Applications vs. Conoco Inc. brought in a $55.25 million jury verdict, he said.

In perhaps the most extensive contingency-litigation gamble in recent years, Boston-based Brown Rudnick Berlack Israels LLP and four other firms helped the state sue tobacco companies in the 1990s as part of a multistate class-action lawsuit. The contract called for the firms to garner 25 percent of the state's recovery, minus fees already received.

Massachusetts stands to receive about $8 billion over the next 25 years, and Brown Rudnick is slated to get $178 million as the state's chief legal representative. Brown Rudnick is waging a legal fight with the state attorney general's office to bump the amount up to $300 million, the amount it claims it is owed under the contingency agreement. Brown Rudnick declined to comment for this story.