Legal regulation of restrictions on the amount of success fees as a method of determining the cost of legal services

The article is devoted to a comprehensive analysis of the issue of possible limitations on the amount of success fees as a way to determine the cost of legal services. It explores the genesis of legal regulation regarding quantitative limits on the cost of legal services and identifies two approaches of responsible judicial practice concerning the possibility of reducing the success fee stipulated in a legal services contract. From the perspective of the need to protect the interests of the weaker party, the question of the legal necessity to depart from the principle of freedom of contract regarding the introduction of any limitations on the amount of success fees is considered. In the context of foreign experience and doctrine, possible ways to address the problem of establishing and paying success fees that are clearly excessive are analyzed. The subject of the study is the methods of protecting the weaker party in the contract from paying success fees that are excessive and obviously unjustified. The aim of the research is to form a comprehensive scientific understanding of the legal regulation of quantitative limits on success fees. The research employs general scientific methods such as analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, and systematization, as well as specific legal methods of cognition, including legal interpretation, comparative legal method, and historical-legal method. The scientific novelty of the study is expressed in the systematic generalization of possible ways to solve the problem of payments of success fees in clearly unreasonable amounts. The effectiveness of potential consolidation of such methods has been analyzed. The necessity of introducing into Russian practice a method allowing courts, in exceptional cases, to reduce success fees is justified. A critical analysis is conducted on the possible borrowing of foreign experience regarding the establishment of specific quantitative limits on success fees, as well as merely stipulating the obligation of the performer not to accept fees in unreasonable amounts. The author proposes to directly enshrine in legislation the authority of courts to reduce the amount of success fees to realize the formulated approach. At the level of the position of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, it should be clarified how and in what cases the court can implement such a possibility. Thus, the court should have the right to reduce the success fee in cases where it is obvious that any reasonable participant in the transaction would not agree to the success fee established in the contract and only upon the request of the client.

legal services, cost of legal services, performer’s fee, payment models, success fee, limits of success fee, restrictions on success fee, quantitative limits, amount of success fee, freedom of contract