Settlement Estimator

Liability percentage and case strength both multiply against the same total damages figure rather than being averaged together, so their effects compound: a case at 50% liability and 50% case strength nets only 25% of full damages, not the 50% either factor alone might suggest. This mirrors how real settlement negotiations work, where genuine uncertainty on both fault and provability erodes value multiplicatively, not additively.

It stands in for non-economic harm — physical pain, emotional distress, and loss of enjoyment of life — that doesn't show up on a medical bill or pay stub, and this calculator takes it as a direct dollar input rather than deriving it automatically. Attorneys commonly estimate it as a multiple of medical expenses, often between 1.5 and 5 times that figure depending on injury severity and permanence, though there's no formula any court or insurer is required to follow.

This calculator applies the attorney fee percentage to the already liability- and strength-adjusted settlement amount, not to the raw total damages figure, which mirrors how contingency fee agreements typically work in practice. A lawyer's cut scales with what's actually recovered, so a weaker case that settles for less also produces proportionally lower attorney fees, not a fixed fee regardless of outcome.

No — it applies a single liability percentage you provide as a blanket haircut on damages, but it doesn't know whether your state caps non-economic damages, bars recovery entirely past a certain fault threshold under a contributory negligence rule, or applies any other jurisdiction-specific limit. Checking your state's specific rules, or asking an attorney, is essential before treating this estimate as realistic.

The two figures sit at 70% and 130% of the central settlement estimate, a fixed 30% band applied purely to illustrate that real settlements rarely land on one exact number. It isn't derived from statistical analysis of comparable cases or any additional inputs, so treat it as a visual reminder of uncertainty rather than a calculated confidence interval.