29% Fee
The number you won't see on their billboard.
Our fee is 29% of what we recover for you, and 33% if we have to file a lawsuit. It is in writing before you sign anything. Most injury firms in Colorado charge 33 to 35%, and 40 to 45% once a lawsuit is filed, and most of them will not tell you that until you are sitting at the table.
This page explains what a contingency fee is, what percentage personal injury lawyers charge in Colorado, and exactly where the difference comes from.
Nearly every injury firm charges a percentage of your recovery. The difference is what percentage they charge, and what that percentage is paying for.
A contingency fee means your lawyer only gets paid if you get paid. There is no hourly rate, no retainer, and no bill showing up while your case is pending. If we recover nothing for you, you owe us no attorney's fee. If we do, our fee comes out of that recovery as a percentage, agreed to in writing before we start working on your case.
That is the whole concept. The mechanics are simple. The number is where people get lost. What percentage is normal? What percentage is high? Nobody hands you a chart to compare against, so most people sign whatever they are handed and hope it is fair.
The idea is older than it sounds, and it was built for people in exactly your position. Contingency fees were first formally authorized in the United States so that injured working people, out of work and buried in medical bills, could hire a lawyer with no money down. It was designed as an access-to-justice tool, not a profit mechanism. Somewhere along the way, the industry built a habit around a number and stopped asking whether that number still made sense.
Massachusetts is generally credited as the first state to authorize them, as a deliberate break from English common law, which banned any third party from holding a financial stake in someone else's lawsuit.
Same as nearly every injury firm. The difference is the percentage when we do recover.
Research published in the Georgetown Law Journal reviewed 500 personal injury firm websites nationwide. 4.4% said what they charge. The same study found most firms charging around one third regardless of case complexity, the quality of representation, or the value of the case.
"That's not a conspiracy. It's just what happens in a market where the price is invisible until it's too late to compare it."
Drive around Denver and look at the billboards. Watch the commercials during the local news. Pull up ten injury firm websites. You will see the same handful of phrases on almost every one: no fee unless we win, free consultation, call now.
What you almost never see is the number. Call five different firms and you will get five different slogans and nearly the same fee. If the fee is fair, and every firm is confident in it, why has an entire industry quietly agreed not to talk about the one figure that decides how much of your own settlement you keep?
Here is the reason. In almost any other purchase, price is the first thing you compare. A contingency fee does not come out of your wallet. It comes out of a settlement that has not happened yet, so most people never see the number until they are signing paperwork. When a fee is invisible, almost nobody shops it, so almost nobody has to compete on it. It is the same quirk that kept real estate commissions parked at 5 to 6% for decades while home prices exploded.
I spent years as a senior attorney at one of Colorado's largest injury firms. I handled well over a thousand cases and fought for clients in state and federal court. I also saw the back end of the business: billboards, call centers, and layers of paralegals and case managers between you and the attorney actually making decisions on your case. That overhead gets paid for somehow, and it is not the firm eating the cost.
The standard fee was set decades ago, when case files were paper and every task took a person. Technology has changed the math since then. Most firms have not changed the fee. The ones that have adopted modern tools are often keeping the efficiency gains as margin instead of passing them to the client. When you pay 35% to a firm running on the same software we do, you are not paying for legal talent. You are paying for their profit padding.
When I started Venyx, I asked one question: if technology makes us faster and more efficient, who should keep the extra money? Venyx runs on modern case management technology. A leaner practice moves faster, works more efficiently, and connects you straight to your attorney. The savings go to you.
