Actions en justice et rémunération des avocats : une revue de la littérature

In tort law, several European countries now formally allow (or foresee) the use of ?no win-no fee? arrangements between litigants and their lawyers. Under such arrangements, the lawyer is paid only when the lawsuit is settled or won at trial, the lawyer thus getting either a premium or a share of the compensation obtained by her client. In this survey, we expose the main results of the theoretical literature that analyzes how these fee arrangements influence both the lawyers? and the litigants? behavior along the litigation flow. In this literature, it is shown that such pay-for-performance contracts seem to have many desirable effects, notably by helping liquidity-constrained plaintiffs to finance their cases, mitigating the moral hazard problem, deterring frivolous lawsuits, and sharing the risk between the client and his lawyer more efficiently. Following these results, we could consider that extending the use of no win-no fee arrangements in all the Western legal systems would be interesting. However, some empirical evidence on these desirable effects should be produced before adopting a public policy perspective.