AFA's can sound good: predictability, discounts, and the outside lawyer gets a guarantee of a certain measure of work. In practice, however, there can be unforeseen consequences, especially when two or more firms are assigned aspects of the same litigation and their fees are constrained by AFA's. Issues include Model Rule 1.5 ("Reasonableness of Fees and Expenses") and its application to "success" fees, the conflict between outside counsel's duties to the client and his/her own financial interest when a fee cap is reached before the matter has concluded, fungibility of services, disparity of effective hourly rates, overloading of firms and load-leveling among firms. The panel will discuss allocation of risk and the attendant ethical conflicts that can arise under several kinds of AFA. With Discussion By: Nicole Bearce Albano - Lowenstein Sandler (Roseland, NJ); Kevin Schiferl - Frost Brown Todd (Indianapolis, IN); Michael Troisi - Samsung (Ridgefield Park, NJ); Marjorie Adams-Franzblau - ADP (Roseland, NJ); Barbara Ashley - Medtronic (Minneapolis, MN).

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