Working Paper

Legal fee restrictions, moral hazard, and attorney profits

Abstract: When attorney effort is unobservable and certain other simplifying assumptions (such as risk neutrality) hold, it is efficient for an attorney to purchase the rights to a client's legal claim. However, the American Bar Association Model Rules of Professional Conduct prohibit this arrangement. We show that this ethical restriction, which is formally equivalent to requiring a minimum fixed fee of zero, can create economic rents for attorneys, even though they continue to compete along the contingent-fee dimension. The contingent fee is not bid down to the zero-profit level, because such a fee does not induce sufficient attorney effort. We thereby provide a political economy explanation for these restrictions.

Status: Published in Journal of Law and Economics, 44(2), Part I, October 2001

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

Part of Series: Working Papers

Publication Date: 1999

Number: 9912

Note: Published as: Santore, Rudy and Alan D. Viard (2001), "Legal Fee Restrictions, Moral Hazard, and Attorney Profits," Journal of Law and Economics 44 (2): 549-572.