Do Risk-Averse Litigants and Risk-Neutral Lawyers Want to Reveal Delegation Contracts?

In litigation, most litigants hire lawyers. The open question is whether the parties want to reveal delegation contracts between them. I consider three types of two-player legal contests: the unobservable-, the observable-, and the unobservable-observable-contracts contests. The outcomes of the three contests reveal the following three findings. First, the more risk-averse litigants pay more contingent fees to their lawyers to increase their expected utilities. Second, lawyers hired by litigants who are more risk-averse have more equilibrium expected payoffs. Finally, each party (a litigant and their lawyer) likes the case in which the party itself does not disclose its contract, while the other party discloses its contract.