Most answers to this question are a list of verbs. Investigates. Gathers. Negotiates. Fights. They describe an attitude rather than a job, and they would read the same in any state.
The work is more specific than that, and in Nevada a good deal of it consists of operating particular legal mechanisms that exist whether or not anyone invokes them. A statutory route to the other driver’s policy limits. A coverage layer that only responds if it was purchased. A fault threshold that ends a claim rather than trimming it.
What follows is that work described by what it actually does, and the Nevada rule governing what a lawyer may charge for it.
Key Takeaways
- Establishing what insurance exists is usually the first substantive task, and NRS 690B.024 supplies a statutory route to the answer.
- Identifying every responsive policy matters, because what the at-fault driver carries often caps everything that follows.
- Nevada’s fault threshold under NRS 41.141 bars recovery outright rather than reducing it, which makes the apportionment argument worth taking seriously from the start.
- NRS 686A.310 holds insurers to reasonable promptness, and a documented record is what makes that standard usable.
- Nevada regulates contingency fees directly. RPC 1.5(c) requires a written agreement, signed by the client, that states how the fee is calculated and how expenses are treated.
- That rule also requires the agreement to state whether the client is liable for expenses if the matter is lost, which is why “you only pay if we win” is an incomplete description of any contingency arrangement.
Establishing What Coverage Exists
In most Nevada collisions what caps a claim is not how badly someone was hurt but how much insurance stands behind the crash. Work that proceeds without pinning that number down is work done partly in the dark.
Nevada provides a route to it. NRS 690B.024 trades one disclosure for another: the claimant authorizes release of their treating records, and the opposing insurer then has five business days to hand over the declarations page. Redactions are permitted for personal details but not for the coverage figures themselves.
The second half of the coverage question looks inward, at the injured person’s own policy. NRS 687B.145(2) obliges a Nevada insurer to put uninsured and underinsured vehicle cover in front of the customer, and that cover is built to reach losses the other driver’s limits will not stretch to. Whether any was bought is a decision made before the crash, often years earlier, and knowing the answer early changes what a claim is realistically working toward. Our Nevada car accident page sets out the layers.
Fixing the Fault Position Before It Hardens
Nevada apportions fault, and it does so with unusual consequences. NRS 41.141 cuts a claimant off entirely once their own share of the negligence exceeds that of the parties on the other side of the case. The recovery is not trimmed; it is gone.
That changes the character of the fault argument. Where a state simply reduces recovery, a dispute over a few percentage points is an argument about the size of an outcome. In Nevada it can be an argument about whether there is one at all. A defendant with a plausible route to pushing a claimant over the line has a reason to pursue it that would not exist elsewhere.
Practically, this is why the early period matters more than it appears to. Physical evidence disperses, vehicles are repaired or disposed of, video is overwritten on ordinary retention cycles, and witnesses become harder to locate and less certain. Much of the work in the first weeks is directed at preserving material that will not be available later, and at ensuring that an account given to an insurer early does not become the foundation of the apportionment argument made later. How the threshold operates is covered on our Nevada personal injury page.
Holding the Insurer to the Standard
Nevada does not give an insurer a fixed number of days to respond to a claim. It holds insurers to standards of reasonableness, which is a different kind of obligation and needs to be used differently.
NRS 686A.310 names a series of unfair practices in settling claims, several of them about delay. An insurer must act “reasonably promptly” on claim communications, must take a position on coverage within a reasonable period once proof of loss is in, and must settle promptly where its own liability has become reasonably clear. Every one of those obligations is pegged to reasonableness rather than to a date.
Because the standard is reasonableness rather than a date, what makes it usable is a record. Correspondence that establishes what was sent, when it was sent, what it contained and when it was answered converts a sense that a claim is being handled slowly into something with a shape. Managing that correspondence is a substantial part of the work and one of the less visible parts.
Protecting the Deadline
An action over injuries to a person must be brought inside two years under NRS 11.190(4)(e). Injury to personal property gets three under NRS 11.190(3)(c) — so the damage to the vehicle and the harm to the driver, from one crash, run on two separate clocks.
These are deadlines to file suit, not to settle, and nothing about an ongoing negotiation extends them. Part of the work is simply ensuring that a claim still under discussion as the date approaches is preserved by filing, rather than negotiated past the point where it can be.
Building the Record of Loss
A claim is established by evidence of what was lost, not by description of it. In practice that means assembling the treatment record as a sequence rather than a summary, getting the clinicians who actually treated the injury to speak to how it developed and where it is heading, and documenting the effect on work and daily activity in terms specific enough to count as evidence.
Where treatment was paid for by a health plan or public programme, or provided against a lien, those interests have to be identified and resolved out of any recovery. That resolution is separate from the question of what the claim is worth, and it determines what actually reaches the injured person.
How Nevada Regulates What a Lawyer Charges
General guidance answers the fee question with a market percentage. Nevada answers it with a rule, and the rule is more useful.
Rule 1.5(c) of the Nevada Rules of Professional Conduct requires that “a contingent fee agreement shall be in writing, signed by the client,” with its terms in boldface type at least as large as the largest type in the agreement. The agreement must state “the method by which the fee is to be determined,” including the percentage applying on settlement, at trial and on appeal. It must state “whether litigation and other expenses are to be deducted from the recovery,” and whether that deduction happens before or after the fee is calculated — an ordering that changes the arithmetic.
The rule goes further in a way that matters. The agreement must state whether the client is liable for expenses even if the matter is lost, and must disclose that a client who loses may be liable for the opposing party’s attorney fees and will owe costs as required by law. At the end of the matter, the lawyer must provide a written statement reporting the outcome and, where there is a recovery, showing the remittance and how it was determined.
Two things follow. Attorney’s fees and case costs are distinct items, and a description of a contingency arrangement that does not separate them is incomplete whoever is offering it. And the written agreement, not a summary on any website, is the document that states what a client will owe and in which circumstances.
When This Work May Not Be Needed
Not every collision calls for it, and the honest version of this page says so.
Where nobody was injured, liability is not in question and the dispute is about repairing a vehicle, the claim is largely an administrative exchange with an insurer and a reader may reasonably handle it themselves. The same can be true of a minor injury that resolved quickly with little treatment and no dispute about who was responsible.
What changes the calculation is any of the following: an injury whose outcome is not yet clear, treatment that is continuing, a suggestion that the claimant was partly responsible, an indication that the other driver’s coverage may not be sufficient, or a claim involving a government vehicle or a commercial operator. Each raises a question that is answered by law rather than by negotiation, and the deadline continues to run while a claim is being worked out either way.
Talk to a Nevada Car Accident Lawyer
Vaksman Khalfin, PC acts for injured people across Nevada from the firm’s Las Vegas office at 10161 Park Run Drive, Suite 150. The first consultation is free, and injury claims are handled on a contingency-fee basis: there is no upfront cost, attorney’s fees are owed only out of a recovery, and fees and case costs are separate items set out in the written agreement. Wider material sits in the Nevada personal injury guides.
Reviewed by Robert B. Vaksman, Partner, Vaksman Khalfin, PC (admitted in Nevada). Last reviewed: 10/23/2026
Frequently Asked Questions
Establishes what insurance is available, including coverage on the injured person's own policy; preserves evidence bearing on apportionment; manages correspondence with insurers against the standards in NRS 686A.310; builds the record of loss; resolves liens and reimbursement interests; and files suit where the two-year period requires it.
Usually under a contingency agreement. Nevada RPC 1.5(c) requires that agreement to be in writing and signed, and to state how the fee is calculated and whether expenses are deducted from the recovery before or after the fee.
Attorney's fees under a contingency agreement are owed out of a recovery. Case costs are a separate item, and RPC 1.5(c) requires the written agreement to state whether the client is liable for them if the matter is lost. The agreement is what answers this, and it should be read before signing.
Sometimes. A property-only claim with clear liability is largely an administrative exchange. The calculation changes where an injury outcome is unclear, fault is contested, coverage may be insufficient, or a government or commercial party is involved.
Nothing is formally closed to a claimant acting alone, but some of the work is unfamiliar: using the NRS 690B.024 authorization route to establish coverage, identifying and sequencing underinsured coverage layers, and framing an apportionment position under a threshold that bars recovery rather than reducing it.
The constraint is evidence rather than any legal requirement. Vehicles are repaired, video is overwritten on routine retention cycles, and recollection fades, so the material bearing on fault is at its most complete early.
No. Most injury claims resolve by agreement, and filing is a step available where a claim has stalled or the two-year period is closing in. Even among cases that do get filed, the large majority end in a negotiated resolution rather than a verdict.
Under RPC 1.5(c): how the fee is calculated, including the percentages applying at settlement, trial and appeal; whether expenses are deducted from the recovery and whether before or after the fee; whether the client is liable for expenses if the matter is lost; and that a losing client may owe the opposing party's fees and will owe costs as required by law.
