ON OCTOBER 11, 1998, A FREIGHT TRAIN STRUCK AND killed Michael Corcoran as he worked on a Union Pacific track bed in Illinois. Soon afterward, a railroad representative offered his widowed wife, Mary, a $1.4 million settlement. Mary, a 46-year-old former waitress, did not know how to judge whether the settlement offer was fair. An experienced lawyer could advise her, but at what price?

The answer may surprise and even enrage you.

The following spring, Mary visited Harpoon Louie's, a bar in Winthrop Harbor, Illinois, to reminisce about her husband with the regulars. Joseph P. Dowd, a small-time lawyer who had heard about the accident, happened to be at the bar also. He introduced himself to Mary and offered to take her case and refer it to a big-time lawyer. He would later explain his motivation for doing so: “Somebody gets run over by a train and killed and leaves a wife and two children. That's a good case.”

Mary gratefully accepted Dowd's offer to help. She told him she wanted to retain one of the top personal injury firms in Chicago, Corboy & Demetrio, because her father had gone to school with one of the partners. Dowd arranged a meeting with Thomas Demetrio, and Mary agreed to pay the firm “25 percent of any sum recovered from settlement or judgment” with Dowd to receive 40 percent of that attorney's fee.