What's In It for the Lawyers? There are hundreds of plaintiff's attorneys working on the tobacco cases all around the country. Most are contingency lawyers who operate on a percentage of any potential settlement. Because the percentage can be as high as 25% and the potential settlement in the tobacco cases is $368 billion dollars, the lawyers stand to make huge amounts of money, in the billions of dollars. Because Scruggs and Motley are the lead lawyers on the state cases, they could each potentially make close to a billion dollars. In order to diffuse this explosive issue, Scruggs and Motley have agreed to have their legal fees put before a national panel of judges to decide what would be fair.