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Attorney Liability for Client’s Liens — Medicare, Medicaid & ERISA

Published: November 12, 2025Last Modified: July 31, 2026
Published: November 12, 2025Last Modified: July 31, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Attorneys can face liability for unpaid client liens from Medicare, Medicaid, and ERISA plans if they fail to resolve or address those obligations before settlement.
  • Government and private health plans increasingly pursue recovery actions against attorneys as well as clients for conditional payments and reimbursement claims.
  • Outsourcing lien resolution to experienced specialists helps limit attorney exposure and can be billed as a case cost to clients.
  • Proactive lien resolution, including negotiation and compliance with reporting requirements, is necessary to reduce firm risk and client liability.

Meet the Author

Greg Maxwell, Esq. CFP®

Greg Maxwell is an attorney, Certified Financial Planner, and settlement planner. He specializes in settlement tax planning, government benefits planning, and financial planning for plaintiffs and plaintiff attorneys.

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Lien Resolution & Attorney Liability for Unpaid Client Liens

Greg Maxwell (Amicus Settlement Planners) and Dave Place (The Place Firm) recorded a webinar to discern fact from fiction regarding trial attorney liability for their client’s unpaid liens. Over the past few years, this has been a topic of growing concern for plaintiff personal injury attorneys.

The Department of Justice has prosecuted a handful of firms in a variety of jurisdictions for their practices regarding Medicare Conditional Payments. Medicare Advantage Plans have also successfully held attorneys liable for double the amount of their lien, and ERISA plans are unfortunately seeing greater success in holding the trial attorney liable.

Greg and Dave provide tools, guidance, and best practices to limit the trial attorney's exposure, and set the record straight.

You can download a copy of the slides and the ERISA Plan Request Letter by clicking the links below:

>> Download Presentation Slides <<

>> Download ERISA Plan Request Template Letter <<

Consider Outsourcing

At Amicus, we partner with Dave Place, Esq. to help our attorney clients with lien resolution issues.

We’ve worked with multiple lien resolution companies in the past, and Dave Place has consistently provided the best service and best results for clients.

Outsourcing lien resolution is a wise decision for many firms. The lien resolution fee can be billed as a case cost — and your staff can spend their time on other tasks (and leave the lien negotiations to an expert).

Dave’s fees are as follows:
• 10% of the savings obtained
• $500 minimum fee due at time of case referral, but if the savings aren’t greater than $500, he refunds the full fee
• $500 flat fee for resolving Medicare’s Conditional Payments (reporting to BCRC through Final Demand)

Do Your Best, Then Bring in Dave

Here’s another option: Your staff can negotiate the fee, and then ask Dave to see if he can get additional reductions. He only charges on any additional amount saved. So, if you don’t want to outsource the entire negotiation process, do your best and then let him see if he can do even better.

Get Your Lien Questions Answered

For the firms that we work with, Dave is happy to answer questions and provide advice and tactics free of charge.

If you have a lien-related question and would like Dave’s insight or help, please email [email protected]. Any emails sent to that address are forwarded to both Dave Place and Greg Maxwell.

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