How a damages-based agreement ties the solicitor's fee to a share of the client's recovery — and the strict rules that govern when and how it can be used.
A DBA stands or falls on compliance: get the formalities wrong and the agreement is unenforceable, leaving the solicitor unpaid. This chapter starts with what a DBA is, how the fee is calculated as a percentage of recovery, what happens when the client recovers nothing, and the proceedings in which DBAs are prohibited. It then works through the prescribed terms and pre-contract explanations needed for enforceability, the percentage caps that vary by type of claim, and whether disbursements survive a losing case. Finally it looks at termination rights and what the original solicitor can claim, before drawing the contrast with conditional fee agreements in both fee structure and cash flow.
