2.
“I’m a lawyer, and I currently work in employment law. The price of a lawyer can be entirely dependent on your case. If you have a very strong case with a high likelihood that it will be paid out in a significant amount of money, then chances are, a lawyer will be willing to take it on at a low retainer or even on a contingency basis (as in they don’t get paid until the case is resolved and they only get paid part of the judgment/settlement). If a lawyer is going to charge you a lot of money upfront or request a high retainer, that means the case may either be not as strong as you think it is, or the chances it gets paid out will be somewhat small.”
“Sometimes, it might be because the defendant doesn’t have that much money to pay it out (for example, a smaller business with small assets, or a business with an HR department that followed the guidelines to a T and acted well enough to dismiss themselves from the lawsuit). But yeah, if you make a post on Reddit and all the commenters are saying, ‘You have a strong case. Go to a lawyer and get paid,’ and then the lawyer wants to charge you a high fee upfront, take this advice into consideration. I always try to be upfront and straight with all clients about the fee arrangement, and I will even bluntly tell them the reason I am charging a $5,000 retainer as opposed to working on a contingency basis is that either it is a weaker case or a case unlikely to end in paid judgment.”
—u/slytherinprolly
Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/hannahdobro/industry-secrets-from-jobs