Table of Contents

1. The origin of the contingency fee; 2. How profitable are contingency fees?; 3. Are contingency fee profits 'reasonable'?; 4. How tort lawyers have increased their profits by restraining competition; 5. Why the market has failed to correct the absence of price competition; 6. Impediments imposed by the bar to price competition; 7. The effects of incentives created by contingency fees; 8. How the quest for profits influenced the development of the tort system; 9. Lawyers' role in the expansion of tort liability; 10. The role of the judiciary in tort system expansion; 11. Current and future expansions of tort liability; 12. The litigation explosion: 'fact or fiction'?; 13. Measures of the rate of expansion of tort liability; 14. The relationship between injury rates and tort system costs; 15. The impacts of substantial increases in tort lawyers' effective hourly rates; 16. Class actions; 17. Fees in class actions; 18. How class action lawyers game fee setting; 19. Securities class actions; 20. Regulation through litigation; 21. A new role for punitive damages: policy-making as a profit center; 22. For-profit partnerships between state attorneys general and contingency fee lawyers; Appendix A. A critique of Alex Tabarrok, the problem of contingent fees for waiters; Appendix B. Calculating tort lawyers' effective hourly rates in 1960; Appendix C. Electronic discovery and the use of contract lawyers; Appendix D. The HMO litigation; Appendix E. The GM 'side saddle' truck litigation: the (short lived) triumph of litigation over the regulatory process; Appendix F. Modern class actions undermine democratic precepts; Appendix G. Other ways lawyers game class action fees; Appendix H. Non-recourse financing of tort litigation; Appendix I. Political contributions by tort lawyers and the U.S. chamber of commerce; Appendix J. Special rules favoring lawyers; Appendix K. The ultimate medical expense 'build-up': whiplash; Appendix L. The effect of punitive damages on compensatory awards.