ELI5: Why does a lawyer's fee determine their ability to defend you in court?

It depends on the lawyer. Some operate on an hourly basis, some take a flat fee for a particular type of case, some are paid a salary (e.g. full time public defenders, and in house counsel at a corporation), and some take a percentage of your winnings (this is called working on a contingency basis, and they can only do that if representing you in a civil case). And, some will represent some clients pro bono, meaning they don't get paid at all (though, obviously, they only take a few such cases at a time and they tend to only do so if the issues are important to them, or the client is very poor and in need of legal services).

There are no floors - you can work for free, though you probably can't pay someone for the privilege of representing them. There aren't any firm ceilings either, though most (maybe all?) state bar associations have rules requiring that a lawyer only charge a reasonable amount based on their level of skill/knowledge and the difficulty of the case. You have to look at what the rest of the market is doing to get those numbers and there are no hard and fast rules there. Generally charging over 1/3 of the winnings if you are working on a contingency basis is against the rules, but I'm not aware of any such limits for other types of work. (Just to give you a sense of it, a 1st year associate at a large law firm in a major city will have his/her time billed to the clients at $300-$400/hr, maybe more these days it's been a few years since I knew for sure. And I know some senior partners bill their time at nearly $1,000/hr and again there are probably those who charge more. If the client will pay it, and the bar doesn't have the sense that you are grossly taking advantage of a desperate person, it's probably an okay fee.)

There are also rules limiting what you can take in payment - money is always fine, but I can't, for example, work on your case in exchange for the movie rights to it (and I'm aware of at least one case in which a lawyer was disbarred for taking sex in payment for services rendered), but that's getting a bit esoteric and a bit far afield from your question.

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