Well if it was 18 million and the attorney took one-third, then the families were left with 12 million to be split 3 ways. That would 4 million each.
I don’t remember the estimates of the legal bills, but I know they were at least seven figures.
I don’t know if new lawyers came in to handle the negotiations. If the original lawyers negotiated with Duke, I don’t see why they would have taken a third. They apparently worked on an hourly basis throughout the case, running up bills of more than a million dollars per family.
But the families had plenty of other costs, such as repeated travel to Durham.