We talk to a lot of people who think finding a lawyer for their discrimination claims will be easy — at least until they try to contact a few and find themselves being rejected or ignored.

Which is why in this post we’ll share what contingency lawyers look for and how you can strategically prepare for success when contacting lawyers.

But before we start — if you’re not familiar with the different options you have for legal representation and support you may want to first review Your Legal Options When Facing Workplace Discrimination.

Contingency lawyers only get paid when and if you receive a financial payout for your harm. As the client you’ll pay nothing up front or if you lose, nothing at all. This means the attorney or firm takes on significant risk with each case and client they accept.

However, the upside for them is they receive more cases than they can possibly support, which makes it possible to cherry pick the strongest cases with the best possibility of a high return on their investment. As someone who wants to secure representation, it’s important to keep this in mind as their favorable terms also translate to increased competition when trying to convince a law firm to take your case.

Convincing a law firm to prioritize your case typically requires:

At the end of the day law firms are just another for-profit organization and the lawyers reviewing your case are just people wanting to know ‘what’s in it for them.’ Keeping this in mind as you contact lawyers will help you tailor your talking points to what matters to them and give you the best chance at gaining representation.

When you reach out to a law firm, it’s unlikely you’ll speak to an attorney unless you can get past the intake interview. This interview is typically led by a employee of the firm, who will ask questions about your case and record your answers. While there is typically a strict set of questions, the tone can range from conversational to formal depending on the firm. Once your answers have been captured, they’re passed to a lawyer who will review before deciding if they’d like to talk with you further.

If your answers don’t check the right boxes — clear evidence, provable financial harm, and a strong legal claim — you’ll likely receive a rejection via email. Sometimes a rejection will include an explanation for why they’ve chosen not to move forward, but not always.

Unfortunately, many people never get past this step. They never speak to a lawyer. They never get the chance to fully explain what happened.

This could be because their case doesn’t check the right boxes or it could be that the person failed to share the key information that would have increased the firm’s interest in the case.

Most people start their story from the beginning — the first awkward comment, the small red flags — and work their way up to the bigger issues. That makes sense emotionally, but it’s not the best way to approach an intake interview.

Here’s why: not everything you say will make it into the file reviewed by an attorney as the person you're speaking to is likely jotting down quick notes and highlights.

With this in mind, you want to prioritize your strongest points and the biggest incidents — most importantly the ones that had a financial impact (like being fired, demoted, or passed over for a promotion).

After you highlight those, you can give a short summary of the incidents leading up to harm. You don’t need to list every unfair assignment or every inappropriate comment. Just explain the pattern, how long it’s been happening, and whether you have any proof (emails, screenshots, witness names, etc.).

And if you really want to give yourself the best chance at representation, have a timeline of facts and evidence already prepared and ready to offer for review. This puts less burden on you to say all the right things, while also demonstrating how strong your case with definitive proof they can review.

However, you should keep in mind that this is only advantageous if your timeline is organized and formatted in a way that’s easy to follow. I wouldn’t recommend sending a massive dump of screenshots and emails, expecting an attorney to sort through it and make sense of it all.

Finally, keep in mind that many people have to contact 10-20 attorneys to find someone willing to take their case, so don’t give up after contacting 2 or 3.

For lawyers, time is money, so if they’re giving some of it to you, it’s a good sign.

While the attorney is experienced and can read between the lines and ask questions that get to the information they need to know, it is still advantageous to show up prepared and organized. Essentially you want to be the type of person they want to work with and it's even better if they walk away confident you'll be easy to work with. Yes, they’re going to help you build the case, but capturing the evidence and providing the facts is your responsibility.

I often tell people, think of each step as if you’re selling the firm on both your case and you. You want to convince them they should go with representing you over someone else.

It’s important to be aware of certain factors that may impact how appealing your case is to lawyers. These things won’t make it impossible to get a lawyer, but are likely to make it harder.

If you signed a mandatory arbitration agreement, it limits your legal options and can make it harder to find a lawyer. Many firms will ask about it during intake, and if your case is strong, they may review the agreement to see if there is any way around it.

If you have one, you’ll typically find the clause buried in the new-hire paperwork you signed when you accepted the job.

If you haven’t escalated internally to make your leadership or HR aware a problem exists and there’s no reason to believe they would know otherwise, it could be a blocker to holding the company itself liable. Which is why contingency lawyers may reject your claims if you contact them before trying to address the issue internally. While lawsuits can be filed against individuals most lawyers won’t be willing to take on the risk required unless the company itself can be sued.

While you can claim your departure was 'constructive termination,' any lawyer will tell you this is difficult to argue and win. You will need to establish that your working conditions were truly intolerable — one lawyer described it as basically needing to prove there was valid risk to your safety. Unfortunately, some lawyers simply don’t want to deal with this additional complexity if they don’t have to.

Any information you’ve shared publicly can be used against you in court.

Some people are under the impression that media attention is beneficial to their case and will only help them get an attorney, but many attorneys prefer you share absolutely nothing publicly, especially not without their guidance and approval. Which is why speaking out before you have a lawyer can also make it harder to get one.

While finding a lawyer is competitive, preparation is not only within your control, it can be the difference between who finds representation and who doesn't.