not the time nor place," says Chief Justice
Gibson, "to discuss the legality of contingent fees; though it be clear
that if the British statutes of champerty were in force here, such fees
would be prohibited by them. But a contract of the sort is certainly not
to be encouraged by implication, from a questionable usage, nor
established by less than a positive stipulation."[49] A contract to
allow a compensation for services in procuring the passage of a private
Act of Assembly, has been held to be unlawful and void, as against
public policy.[50] "The practice," said Judge Rogers, in delivering the
opinion of the court, "which has generally obtained in this State, to
allow a contingent compensation for legal services, has been a subject
of regret; nor am I aware of any direct decision by which the practice
has received judicial sanction in our courts." The case of _Ex parte
Plitt_,[51] however, recognizes fully the lawfulness of contingent fees,
though in his opinion Judge Kane says: "It is not a practice to be
generally commended, exposing honorable men not unfrequently to
misapprehension and illiberal remark, and giving the apparent sanction
of their example to conduct, which they would be among the foremost to
reprehend. Such contracts may sometimes be necessary in a community such
as that of Pennsylvania has been, and perhaps as it is yet; and when
they have been made in abundant good faith--_uberrima fide_--without
suppression or reserve of fact or exaggeration of apprehended
difficulties, or under influence of any sort or degree; and when the
compensation bargained for is absolutely just and fair, so that the
transaction is characterized throughout by 'all good fidelity to the
client,' the court will hold such contracts to be valid. But it is
unnecessary to say, that such contracts, as they can scarcely be
excepted from the general rule, which denounces as suspicious the
dealings of fiduciaries with those under their protection, must undergo
the most exact and jealous scrutiny before they can expect the judicial
ratification." Finally, the question of law may be considered as at rest
in Pennsylvania by the decision of the Supreme Court in Patten _v._
Wilson,[52] which recognized an agreement between counsel and client to
pay him out of the verdict as an equitable assignment, and gave effect
to it as against an attaching creditor.

It is not, however, with the lawfulness, but with the policy and
morality of the prac