I am Swazi. I was involved in a Motor vehicle accident in the year 2000 in SA. I instructed a certain lawyer in Pretoria to process my claim. The matter dragged for some time before being concluded. I commend the work of the Law Society in Pretoria who pursued my Attorney as he had negleted my claim and was refusing to update me on it’s progress.

Be it as it may, he finally informed me that the Fund had made an offer to settle and was due to pay at or before the end of March 2011.

What is confusing me more now is that he is avoiding to disclose to me the offer of settlement,let alone compute his legal fees (WHICH FEE SCALE is unknown to me).

What is the way out in this problem i am faced with?

No matter what happened, the insurance will always offer the minimum amount to settle your case. There is nothing you could do to prevent an attorney from accepting that first minimum offer and walk away from your case without negotiating or taking any legal action other than filed the claim for you. The contingent fee agreement requires you to pay that kind of money. Your attorney has accomplished his job when he received that first offer, why should he spend more time and money to defense for you. The extra money he gained for you through negotiation won’t translate into much more commission for them and it would cost them a lot of money to take deposition, get witnesses and go to court.

It is a dream to find an attorney who really wants to work for you. I had such a dream and it ended up my attorney took away everything, including his commission, my settlement from the insurance and I have to use my own money to hire another attorney to wrap the case where he left it. Please see my review on Steve R. Scharfstein on yelp.com for the details.

Contingent fee is not as good as it sounds. I would be much better off if I took the law in my own hand.