Gross versus net recovery
A fee calculated on the gross recovery takes a share of money that later leaves your pocket as expenses. Confirm in writing which base the percentage applies to before signing.
Sri Selvam Siddhar
Disputed property and injury insurance claims in Texas, from the first adjuster call through denial, appraisal and litigation, and how to judge whether a lawyer is worth the share of the payout
Before you sign a contingency agreement, check these four clauses
A close read of the fee contract on a Texas insurance claim: the step-up on filing suit, expense deductions, referral splits, and the math against the offer already made.
A storm claim underpaid twice, then read line by line against the policy and the Texas Insurance Code. What is set down here is the paperwork trail, the deadlines that bind the insurer, and the points where a claim stops being a phone argument.
Statutory interest and fee awards
Texas insurance claims can produce interest and attorney fee awards on top of the policy benefit. The agreement should say plainly whether the contingency percentage reaches those amounts.
Expense ledger on request
Ask for a running list of case costs rather than a single total at settlement. Engineers, transcripts, filing fees and mediation add up faster than most clients expect.
The contingency agreement is usually two or three pages, printed small, handed over at the end of a meeting where the conversation has been about your roof or your neck rather than about money. It is a contract, enforceable, and it governs every dollar that moves after it is signed. The four clauses that decide what you actually receive are rarely the ones read aloud. A careful reader slows down at the percentage, at the expense paragraph, at the sentence about filing suit, and at whatever the agreement says about other lawyers touching the file.
The percentage on the first page is a range, not a number
Most agreements state a base fee, commonly a third, and then qualify it several sentences later. The qualification is what matters. Read whether the percentage applies to the gross recovery or to the recovery net of something, whether it covers statutory interest and attorney fee awards recovered under the Texas Insurance Code, and whether a separate percentage attaches to any bad faith or extra-contractual damages. If the agreement is silent on those categories, ask for it in writing before signing, because silence in a fee contract is usually resolved in favor of whoever drafted it.
Expenses come out before the fee or after it, and it changes the check
Case expenses on a property claim are real: an engineer's report, a public adjuster or estimator, deposition transcripts, filing fees, mediation costs, sometimes a roofing consultant who has to fly in. Whether those come off the top before the percentage is calculated, or off your share after, moves several hundred to several thousand dollars. On a fifty thousand dollar recovery with six thousand in expenses, deducting first leaves the fee on forty-four thousand; deducting after leaves it on the full fifty. Ask which order applies, and ask for a running expense ledger rather than one summary at the end.
The step-up when suit is filed, and what exactly triggers it
Nearly every agreement raises the percentage if litigation begins, often from a third to forty percent, sometimes higher for appeal. The trigger language is the part worth arguing about. A step-up tied to the actual filing of a petition is defensible, because the work genuinely multiplies once discovery and depositions start. A step-up tied to sending a pre-suit notice letter, which the Texas Insurance Code requires before certain claims anyway, is not the same thing at all. Ask whether the higher rate applies to the whole recovery or only to the amount obtained above the last pre-suit offer.
Referral splits and who actually works your file
If the attorney you met found you through another lawyer, the agreement may authorize a fee division. Texas rules permit it with your written consent and require that the lawyers either split the work or share joint responsibility. That split costs you nothing extra in theory, since it comes out of the same percentage. In practice it tells you something useful: which firm is answering your calls, which one is taking the deposition, and whether the person who sold you on the representation will be in the room. Ask for the names, and ask who signs the demand letter.
Run the arithmetic against the offer already on the table
Suppose the carrier has offered thirty thousand on a hail claim you believe is worth ninety. A third of ninety thousand is thirty thousand, plus expenses, leaving you roughly what you would have kept had you accepted and walked away. That comparison is the honest test, and it favors representation only when the gap between the offer and the policy's real exposure is wide, or when the carrier has stopped responding, or when the file needs an engineer to say what a homeowner cannot. The Texas Department of Insurance oversees how carriers handle claims, and a documented complaint sometimes moves a small underpayment without a fee at all.
Write the numbers down before you sign: the base percentage, the litigation percentage, the expense order, and the offer currently outstanding. A firm confident in the value it adds will sit through that arithmetic with you and often propose a tiered fee that reflects it, a lower rate on the amount already offered and the full rate on everything recovered above it. That structure exists, it is negotiable, and asking for it is the clearest signal that you have read the document.