Legal Question in Business Law in California

That basically means the lawyer's suit will ask not only for the unpaid fees, but also for the costs associated with collecting the fees. It might be helpful to know that attorney fee suits are regulated by law, and that a client can demand arbitration by a bar association arbitrator or arbitration panel. See Business & Professions Code sections 6200-6206 re arbitration, and 6146-6149.5 re fee agreements generally. Also, the State Bar can answer questions about fee agreements and liens; the only kind of liens I know about are under Family Code sections 2033 and 2034, involving real-estate liens to pay the divorce lawyer. There are also cases where a plaintiff will assign part of his prospective settlement to his attorney to cover the fees, but an assignment creates a different kind of interest - an immediate ownership - rather than a lien.

I don't have your retainer agreement/ engagement letter in front of me, but there is another type of lien that Mr. Whipple does not mention. It is called an attorney's charging lien, and is a lien on the recovery you collect or win in the case.

If you have access to a law library, you can read about attorney charging liens in the first chapter of The Rutter Group's Civil Procedure Before Trial. The subject is also covered in The Rutter Group's Professional Responsibility.

There is an entire body of law on the subject, which is governed by the State Bar Act (contained in the Business & Professions Code), case law, and the California Rules of Professional Conduct.