Short answer: in most common-law jurisdictions, yes. A client can generally end the relationship with a lawyer at any time, without having to prove fault or obtain the lawyer’s consent. The reverse is far harder: a lawyer who wants to walk away from a live matter typically needs a recognised reason and must give the client reasonable notice. That asymmetry is where retainer agreements do most of their quiet work – and the English litigation over the collapse of Brazil’s Fundão Dam, usually called the Mariana dam case, is an unusually clear place to see why the paperwork matters.
The rule that surprises people: you can leave, your lawyer mostly cannot
The client’s right to change representation is old and broad. In Fracasse v. Brent, a 1972 decision of the Supreme Court of California, the court held that a client’s power to discharge an attorney, with or without cause, is absolute, and that exercising it is not a breach of the retainer contract. The judgment reasoned that the relationship depends on confidence, and that confidence cannot be compelled.
England and Wales reaches a similar practical result from the other direction, through contract law. The Solicitors Regulation Authority’s guidance on terminating a retainer records the common-law position: a retainer is ordinarily an “entire contract” to carry a matter through to its conclusion, and a firm that wants to end it needs a good reason plus reasonable notice. The leading illustration still cited is Underwood, Son & Piper v Lewis (1894), which held that a solicitor cannot drop a client at the last moment without giving reasonable notice and a proper reason.
What counts as a good reason is fact-specific, but the published examples are recognisable: a conflict of interest, an instruction that cannot properly be put to a court, an inability to obtain clear instructions, a breakdown in trust and confidence, or non-payment of fees. A lawyer generally cannot simply decide that another matter looks more attractive, or leave because the client declined advice the lawyer happened to favour.
| Who wants to end it | What usually applies | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Client ends the relationship | Generally permitted at any time, with or without cause | Fracasse v. Brent (1972); common law in many jurisdictions |
| Lawyer ends it, no court case running | Needs a recognised good reason and reasonable notice | Underwood, Son & Piper v Lewis (1894); SRA guidance |
| Lawyer ends it during litigation | Same, plus usually the court’s permission to come off the record | Court rules; ABA Model Rule 1.16(c) |
| Fees after either side ends it | Unearned advance released; work already done may still be charged | ABA Model Rules 1.15 and 1.16 |
Sources: the cited judgments and the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct. The precise position differs between jurisdictions and between contentious and non-contentious work.
Regulators and bar associations publish detailed guidance on these points, and legal news coverage of the profession regularly examines how they are applied day to day.
Why an event in Brazil ended up in a London courtroom
On 5 November 2015 the Fundão tailings dam in south-east Brazil failed, releasing in excess of 40 million cubic metres of mining waste. Nineteen people died, the village of Bento Rodrigues was destroyed, and contamination travelled down the Doce River through Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo to the Atlantic. It is widely described as one of the worst environmental disasters in Brazil’s history.
What followed is instructive for anyone who signs a legal retainer without reading it fully, because it produced litigation on a scale that no one-off fee letter is designed to carry. English proceedings were issued in late 2018 and later transferred to the Technology and Construction Court in London. By the time of the 2025 judgment on liability, the claimant group numbered roughly 586,906 individuals, 1,433 businesses, 69 faith-based institutions, 32 municipalities, seven utility companies and about 23,750 indigenous and Quilombola community members. The English claim was brought against the mining group BHP.
In November 2025 the High Court handed down its decision on threshold liability in favour of the claimants; the defendant group has said it intends to appeal, as set out in the November 2025 High Court liability ruling. The point for our purposes is not the outcome but the machinery behind it.
Scale changes the contract. When hundreds of thousands of people share one claim, representation is organised through framework agreements, costs-sharing arrangements and, often, third-party litigation funding. In these proceedings the defendants at one stage applied for security for costs and for information about third-party funding – routine procedural moves in large commercial group claims, and both heavily influenced by the terms on which a claim is financed and run. None of that appears in a one-page engagement letter, and all of it can affect what a client is asked to sign.
What a retainer agreement actually controls
A retainer is not a single document with a single meaning. In practice the word covers two things: the fee paid to reserve a lawyer’s availability, and the agreement that sets out the working relationship. The American Bar Association’s explainer on lawyer retainers lists the fundamentals – the services to be provided, the duration, the hourly rate, the billable costs and the payment schedule.
Money paid in advance is the part most clients misunderstand. Under the ABA Model Rules, an advance fee deposit is generally held in a client trust account and drawn down only as work is performed (Rule 1.15); whatever has not been earned when the relationship ends is returned to the client (Rule 1.16). ABA Formal Opinion 505, issued in 2023, applied that principle to flat fees, confirming that a flat fee paid up front is earned as the work is actually done rather than on receipt.
That is why a clause calling a payment “non-refundable” or “earned on receipt” rarely does what it appears to do. The label does not override the duty to hold unearned funds for the client. An “evergreen” retainer, by contrast, is a replenishment mechanism: the client tops the trust balance back up to an agreed level as it is used. It changes the billing rhythm, not the underlying rule about unearned money.
The clauses most people skim past
- Termination and notice. How either side ends the relationship, what notice is required, and whether the agreement tries to describe withdrawal in ways the professional rules do not allow.
- Scope. What is included, what is explicitly excluded, and whether the lawyer may limit the engagement to a single hearing or stage.
- Fee basis and disbursements. Hourly, fixed, conditional or contingency; which expenses are billed on top; and how payments on account are requested.
- Who decides settlement. The client does. Under most professional rules that decision cannot be signed away in advance.
- What happens to your file. The agreement should say how papers and property are returned, and how the file will be transferred to any new representative.
What a lawyer can and cannot write into the agreement
The American Bar Association addressed this directly in Formal Opinion 523, released on 20 May 2026. The opinion confirms that an engagement agreement may set out a client’s obligations – both ones already implicit, such as cooperating and providing truthful information and documents, and additional permissible ones, such as agreeing not to record lawyer-client communications or to discuss the matter on social media during the representation. A substantial, persistent failure to meet such an obligation, after reasonable warning, can support withdrawal under Model Rule 1.16(b)(5). The ABA’s summary of the opinion sets out the reasoning.
Just as important are the limits. An engagement agreement cannot bar a client from filing a bar grievance, cannot require the client to accept or reject a settlement, cannot expand the grounds for withdrawal beyond the rules, and cannot describe withdrawal in a way that misleads – for example by implying the lawyer may leave unilaterally when a tribunal’s permission is required. A minor or insubstantial breach does not justify ending the relationship.
Lawyers’ risk advisers tend to frame the same document differently. Practitioners quoted in legal-press coverage of the opinion describe a well-drafted engagement letter as a client-facing roadmap that reduces disputes by setting expectations about communication and billing. Ethics counsel add a caution that runs the other way: the opinion does not give a lawyer licence to put confidential reasons for withdrawing into a public court filing. Both readings support the same conclusion – the document is worth reading before you need it.
If you do switch lawyers, the sequence that protects your position
Most of the practical difficulty in changing representation is procedural rather than legal. A workable sequence, subject to the rules of the relevant jurisdiction:
- Read the termination clause first, so you know what notice the agreement requires.
- Send written notice that you are ending the relationship, with an effective date, and keep proof of delivery.
- Request a full accounting of fees earned, expenses incurred and the remaining balance, and ask for the unearned portion to be returned.
- Ask for your complete file – pleadings, correspondence, evidence and work product – to be released.
- If a case is in court, expect a formal step to come off the record. Where the client consents, this is usually a notice of change; where the client does not, the outgoing lawyer may have to apply to the court.
Timing matters. Giving notice shortly before a hearing is less likely to satisfy a reasonable-notice requirement than giving it well in advance, and courts commonly allow a client a period to instruct replacement counsel. Where the outgoing lawyer worked on a contingency basis, they may claim the reasonable value of the work already done – in some jurisdictions only once the underlying case produces a recovery. Fee-arbitration programmes run by state or local bars are often the cheapest and fastest route for a fee dispute.
What the Mariana litigation actually reveals
Strip away the scale and the takeaway is straightforward. The headline right – a client’s ability to change representation – generally survives whatever the retainer says, because it rests on the nature of the relationship rather than on the contract. What the contract controls is the cost of exercising that right: the notice you owe, the fees already earned, how a shared claim is financed, and how smoothly the handover goes.
In a claim involving hundreds of thousands of people, those details stop being administrative. A condition in a group claim’s funding or retainer documents can affect whether a client can move to another representative without jeopardising their position in the case. That is the practical reason to read a retainer closely – not because the contract defeats your rights, but because it sets the path you have to walk to use them.
Frequently asked questions
Can I fire my lawyer for any reason?
In most common-law jurisdictions, yes – the right to discharge is generally described as absolute and does not require cause. You may still owe for work already done.
Does firing my lawyer cancel the fees I already owe?
No. Ending the representation generally stops future charges and requires the return of unearned advance payments, but services already rendered may still be billed.
Can my retainer say the fee is non-refundable?
It can say so, but under the ABA Model Rules an advance fee is typically held in trust and earned only as work is performed. A label does not override that obligation.
Can my lawyer quit whenever they want?
Generally no. A lawyer typically needs a recognised good reason and must give reasonable notice. If a case is before a court, the lawyer may also need the court’s permission to withdraw.
Do I have to read the whole retainer agreement?
You should. The clauses that matter most – termination, notice, scope, fee basis, settlement authority and return of your file – are usually short and easy to find once you know what to look for.
What if my lawyer refuses to hand over my file?
Rules of professional conduct generally require client materials to be released at the end of a representation, and most bars operate a fee-arbitration or complaints process if a dispute continues.
How this article was put together
This piece set out to explain, for a general reader, how the right to change legal representation interacts with a retainer agreement. It draws on the High Court judgment and the November 2025 liability ruling in the English proceedings arising from the Fundão Dam collapse, the ABA Model Rules and Formal Opinion 523 (released 20 May 2026), the ABA’s 2025 explainer on retainers, and the SRA’s guidance on terminating a retainer. Fee and withdrawal rules vary by jurisdiction and by individual case, so the general principles here should be checked against local rules before being relied on.
