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Help with personal injury lawyer and contingency fee. **tl;dr** Our lawyer took 1/3 of my wife's personal injury settlement as expected, and an additional 1/3 against all her PIP claims without ever explaining that this was part of the deal. I'm not sure where I need to start, so I'll just go with the beginning. July of 2010, my wife was in a motor vehicle accident in Seattle, WA. She held no fault; she was stopped at a stoplight and a women hit her from behind. The other driver was uninsured and unlicensed. As a result of that accident, she has had extensive back and head problems. We attempted resolution with our insurance company (she did have UIM coverage), but quickly realized that we needed to hire an attorney. I was in Alaska working at the time of the incident and throughout the first couple months of this process. My wife (then girlfriend) had to find a lawyer on her own. She signed what we believe to be a standard 1/3 contingency agreement with the attorney. After two years, the insurance company recently settled with my wife. She received the full benefit for bodily injury allowed in our coverage. She has also spent $18k of her PIP benefits so far on her medical care. The original agreement said (I believe...its not in front of me at the moment) that the attorney would receive 1/3 of any and all claims. We did not realize this included the PIP benefits also. He took his 1/3 from the injury settlement and an additional 1/3 against the PIP claims from the injury settlement. This means he has taken 58% of my wife's injury settlement. I do understand that contingency can increase if a case escalates or gets complicate... ours was a not (I can go into detail if need be). So, I see this a couple of ways: First of all, this is definitely a lesson learned about signing contracts. My wife had to do it alone at the age of 23. She really had no idea what she was looking at. We should have stepped back and made sure we understood everything from