dissenting.

¶ 1 The court vacates today the trial tribunal’s order refusing to consider — for perceived want of jurisdiction over the § 84 approval order1 — the claimant’s post-settlement application for a fee-quantum inquiry. It remands the claimant’s request with directions to grant a hearing. While I do not recede from the court’s ultimate disposition of the cause by today’s remand, I write in dissent to afford the Workers’ Compensation Court and its bar some insights into the underlying problem at hand and to suggest several solutions that would better secure the stability and finality of settlements. My refusal to join the court’s opinion is prompted by grave concerns over its anemic treatment of the critical analytical underpinnings for vacating the trial tribunal’s order. Today’s vacation will tend to eclipse rather than unveil the urgent need for an improved ground-level supervision of the § 84 settlement process.2

¶ 2 The court’s conclusion that the counsel-fee issue remains pending before the trial tribunal seems to rest on its mistaken notion that this claimant had timely revoked his earlier consent to a twenty-percent fee. That is not my view. Claimant’s 6 March 1996 letter to the trial tribunal reveals only that there was then a pending controversy in which he stood in a posture adversarial to that of his lawyer over the quantum to be deducted from the achieved settlement. Bearing no stamp that would provide certified proof of its mailing, the March 12 order facially lacks the statutorily mandated indi-cium of finality for want of compliance with the provisions of 85 O.S.Supp.1994 § 3.6.3 That deficiency is plainly apparent from an *1285inspection of the trial tribunal’s record.4 The critical fact here is not that the letter-request for a hearing had timely reached the trial tribunal, but rather that the fee allocation (recited in the settlement-approval order) cannot operate as a final adjudication imposing a cognizance-anchored bar of the fee quantum’s further re-examination in the trial tribunal. The § 3.6 twenty-day jurisdictional cutoff had neither been triggered nor had its bar dropped when the assigned judge reached for hearing the claimant’s letter-request.5 In short, critical to today’s disposition by remand is not the time claimant’s letter ivas filed, but the trial tribunal’s then-retained jurisdiction over its earlier March 12 order.

I

THE ANATOMY OF TENDERED CONTROVERSY

¶ 3 Claimant sustained on-the-job injuries when working for the City of Tulsa. Finding his impairment to be permanent and total, the Workers’ Compensation Court allowed him benefits and allocated a twenty-percent attorney’s fee authorized by the terms of 85 O.S.Supp.199j § SO.6 The employer and claimant later entered into an agreement (on 16 February 1996) for a final lump-sum settlement. By the trial tribunal’s 12 March 1996 joint-petition approval order, which was never sent to the parties, claimant’s attorney was allowed twenty-percent of the settlement amount. In his 6 March 1996 letter to the presiding judge, claimant sought an adversarial hearing for determination of the fee’s quantum, urging that his lawyer’s allocated fee was excessive. The Workers’ Compensation Court concluded (by its order of 27 September 1996) the fee amount set aside by the settlement-approval order could not be modified because more than twenty days had passed since the order’s entry. The Court of Civil Appeals sustained the trial tribunal’s ruling. The case is now before us on claimant’s certiorari quest.

II

FERGUSON7 AND SNYDER8 — THE TWO CASES WHICH MOST RECENTLY PRONOUNCED THE 20-DAY JURISDICTIONAL CUTOFF-DO NOT APPLY HERE TO BAR THE TRIAL TRIBUNAL’S COGNIZANCE OVER THE FEE-QUANTUM CONTROVERSY; BY ITS FAILURE TO SEND CLAIMANT A COPY OF THE SETTLEMENT-APPROVAL ORDER, THE TRIAL TRIBUNAL RETAINED COGNIZANCE OVER THE FEE DISPUTE GENERATED BY CLAIMANT’S MARCH 6 LETTER

¶ 4 Recent jurisprudence — Ferguson and Snyder — teaches that the Workers’ Compensation Court’s cognizance over its reviewable orders9 is limited by the twenty-day period *1286prescribed by law for filing a review petition. Both of these cases deal with the trial tribunal’s jurisdiction over those orders, a copy of which was sent to the parties as required by the terms of 85 O.S.Supp.1994 § 3.6.10 The § 3.6 jurisdictional bar, which applies with equal force to settlements as well as to products of adversarial process,11 is an across-the-board prerequisite for ascribing decisional finality. Because the joint-petition approval orders are mandatory12 as well as appeal-able,13 the provisions of § 3.6 (requiring that reviewable orders be mailed to all parties) govern the § 84 proceedings. It is hence clear that neither Ferguson nor Snyder bars the trial tribunal’s consideration of the fee-quantum controversy here.

¶ 5 When the assigned judge reached the fee-quantum issue for hearing, the twenty-day time bar had not yet dropped — nor has it ever been triggered by the act of sending to the parties a copy of the approval order.14 Failure to send the approval’s copy prevented that order from attaining finality status for the fee-quantum controversy between claimant and his lawyer15 Moreover, mailing of the order’s copy to the claimant’s lawyer alone would not have been enough to terminate the trial tribunal’s cognizance since the lawyer was then in known conflict until his client.16

¶ 6 Because the norms that govern compensation of workers for an on-the-job injury or death constitute public law,17 agreements between employers and employees can never attain legally binding force without the trial tribunal’s approval.18 Approval of the § 84 settlement is not merely a ministerial function. As a judicial act that is absolutely indispensable to the agreement’s legal viability, an approval order19 must be treated very much like other judicial acts of the trial tribunal and processed in a conformable manner.

Ill

AN ASSIGNED TRIAL JUDGE WILL ON REMAND HAVE JURISDICTION TO EXAMINE INTO THE FEE-QUANTUM CONTROVERSY IN A HEARING IN WHICH CLAIMANT’S LAWYER WILL ACT AS HIS CLIENT’S ADVERSARY

¶ 7 The trial judge found that she could not modify the fee’s quantum because more than twenty days had passed since the March 12 order’s entry. She doubtless overlooked the fact that the mechanism which triggers the onset of the twenty-day period was never set in motion. That bar, which is raised by sending a copy of the approval order to the affected parties, automatically drops twenty days later.20 As no copy had been sent to the claimant when his March 6 letter-request came for hearing, the twenty-day jurisdic*1287tional bar had neither been raised nor allowed to drop.

¶ 8 An assigned judge will hence be free on remand to examine into the fee-quantum controversy in a hearing in which the claimant’s lawyer will act as his client’s legal adversary.

IY

WHILE GENERALLY A REVIEWING COURT SHOULD NEITHER ADDRESS NOR SPECULATE ON ISSUES UNNECESSARY TO REACH ITS DISPOSITION OF THE CASE, IT MUST IN THIS CAUSE NOTICE THE PRESENCE OF SEVERAL DISTURBING PROCEDURAL INFIRMITIES, ALL HAVING THE POTENTIAL SERIOUSLY TO UNDERMINE THE STABILITY AND FINALITY OF THE § 84 SETTLEMENT PROCESS

¶ 9 By the provisions of Art. 7 § 6, Okl. Const.,21 this court has been vested with the constitutional responsibility for the day-today operations of all courts placed in a position subordinate to this power. Acting as a § 6 supervisor of the judiciary, this court is duty-bound to take notice of, and then to direct the Workers’ Compensation Court’s attention to, serious procedural infirmities in that tribunal’s handling of § 84 settlements.

¶ 10 Revealed to us by this record are three serious deficiencies in the present handling of the § 84 settlement process: (1) the current practice does not require pre-approval trial-level inquiry into the claimant’s on- or off-the-record22 waiver23 of a fee-quantum hearing; (2) copies of the trial tribunal’s joint-petition approval orders are neither mailed to counsel of record nor to unrepresented parties; and (3) the trial tribunal appears to have no system for monitoring filings made anterior to the approval order’s entry in those cases in which the § 84 settlement process remains sub judice.

A.

Lack Of The Claimant’s On- or Off-The-Record Waiver Of A Fee-Quantum Hearing

¶ 11 There is a serious procedural gap in the internal processing of joint-petition settlements 24 which may, as it had done *1288here,25 leave the fee quantum open-ended and hence keqp it suspended as an unresolved issue far beyond the point of final accord between the employer and its employee.26 The flaw can be removed by requiring that when eliciting testimony for the settlement’s approval every claimant’s lawyer (1) inform the client (a) of the total fee amount that will be deducted from the settlement as well as (b) of the manner in which that fee will be remitted to the lawyer; (2) ask the client if that amount and its payment mode are acceptable; and (3) advise27 the client that (a) he/she may either agree to the explained fee terms and waive the right to a fee-quantum hearing or request that the fee-amount dispute be set for a post-settlement adversarial hearing and (b) absent a claimant’s waiver and sans his/her request for a deferred post-settlement hearing, the trial tribunal mil at once proceed to hear and decide the ancillary fee-quantum issue.28 The current practice of not having a judge present to hear the settlement testimony need not be disturbed, although it should be made clear that — as a point of every lawyer’s duty — all § 84 cases should be referred directly to the judge once it becomes apparent that the claimant will not waive the adversarial hearing on the lawyer’s ancillary claim for a fee.

(1) The Legal Characteristics Of A Lawyer’s Ancillary Fee-Quantum, Claim

1112 A controversy between the claimant and his lawyer over the quantum of counsel fee to be paid out of the achieved accord is ancillary to the settlement.29 In the absence *1289of a claimant’s on- or off-the-record waiver,30 the trial tribunal need not treat the lawyer’s fee-quantum issue as an indivisible part of the settlement proceeding but may sever it for later consideration and treatment as ancillary to the worker’s claim.

¶ 13 Where, as here, the record reveals no waiver (of right to a fee-quantum decision produced by adversary process), a counsel-fee award recited in the settlement order constitutes no more than a tentative trial tribunal’s allocation to the lawyer of the statutorily allowable maximum compensation. The actual fee quantum to be allowed remains a disputed issue yet to be resolved.31

(2) The Fee-Quantum. Inquiry

¶ 14 Unless a waiver-resisting claimant will — after receiving a trial judge’s on-the-record warning that at the next stage of the tribunal’s proceedings the claimant’s own lawyer (rather than the respondent-employer) will be confronting him/her as an adversary — request, upon good cause shown, a deferred post-settlement hearing on the issue, the trial tribunal is duty-bound to proceed at once to hear and decide the ancillary dispute over the amount to be awarded the lawyer. No fee-quantum controversy (between the claimant and his lawyer) should ever be allowed to cloud, delay, impair or interfere with a pending § 84 settlement’s completion. Nothing less is both parties’ due when the claimant should confront a potential challenge from his own lawyer — a professional advocate ordinarily expected to identify with the client’s cause until the very end of litigation process.32

¶ 15 Because there is in this cause absolutely no paper trail of this claimant’s on-the-record 33 or off-the-record34 waiver of a fee-dispute inquiry, his plea in the March 6 letter and in the instant proceeding for review— that he is entitled to an adversarial hearing — indicates neither a retraction of, nor a retreat from, an earlier-assumed contrary position. In sum, this record is silent on claimant’s earlier waiver.35 Waiver is a sine qua non of the trial tribunal’s power to determine, sans separate hearing, the fee to be deducted from the award. The transcript does not disclose that the claimant had ever been informed of his rights and knowingly relinquished them.36 His critical waiver may not be found from a silent record.37

*1290B.

Unless There Is An On- or Off-The-Record Waiver By Counseled Claimants of An Adversarial Fee-Quantum Hearing, Copies of Joint-Petition Approval Orders Must Be Mailed To Represented Claimants As Well As To Their Lawyers.38

¶ 16 We glean from the record that the trial tribunal does not mail copies of its joint-petition approval orders either to the unrepresented parties or to counsel of record. This court is free to take judicial notice of any jurisdiction-impacting feature of internal operations in a judicial institution that, by the command of § 6,39 stands as its administrative subordinate.

¶ 17 Unless an on- or off-the-record waiver of an adversarial fee-quantum hearing is present, orders approving joint-petition settlements must be mailed not only to counsel of record but also to every represented claimant.40 A claimant’s current mailing address should be provided for the record through counsel’s pre-approval examination. The current forms for a joint petition and for an order approving settlement should be amended to include — in the former document — that the claimant has tendered a waiver of his right to a hearing on the fee-quantum issue (or requested a hearing on that issue) and that the claimant has been fully informed of his rights. The revised order form should make reference to the waiver’s tender and set out that it was either approved by the court or rejected by the claimant. In the latter case the trial tribunal (1) may at once proceed to hear and decide the dispute over the amount to be awarded unless (2) a fully informed claimant requests a deferred fee-quantum hearing, in which event there should be an order setting the fee issue for a post-settlement hearing.

C.

The Trial Tribunal Should Implement A System For Monitoring Filings In Claims That Stand Sub Judice In The § 84 Settlement Process

¶ 18 The trial tribunal seems to have no mechanism to monitor, in cases which stand sub judice for a § 84 settlement approval, those filings which affect the trial tribunal’s actions in a then-pending settlement proceeding. We glean this deficiency from the record. It reveals that claimant’s critical letter, placed on file 6 March 1996, failed to receive a hearing until one year later.

*1291¶ 19 Claimant’s letter should have at once been called to the attention of the judge to whom the settlement proceeding was then assigned. It is critical that a system be instituted to monitor cases awaiting § 84 approval’s entry in order that every filing which affects the issues then before the court may be called to the attention of the judge to whom the case stands assigned.

¶ 20 In sum, I would today invite the trial tribunal’s attention to all the disclosed infirmities and call for immediate promulgation of ameliorative rules. The rule changes would effectively fill the present-day procedural vacuum. Nay, they would transform instanter a § 84 approval order into & final adjudication not only of the claim (against the employer) but also of the claimant’s adversarial rights vis-a-vis his/her lawyer.

Y

SUMMARY

¶21 I would declare today that (1) the trial tribunal’s failure to mail to the claimant a copy of its § 84 approval order prevented the twenty-day jurisdictional bar from being triggered; the fee-quantum issue hence lay within the range of the trial tribunal’s then-retained jurisdiction and (2) the Workers’ Compensation Court should correct the flaws now present in its internal process to better ensure stability and finality for its orders that approve a § 84 settlement.

¶ 22 The counsel-fee issue should, on remand, be treated as both severable and severed from the remainder of the approval order. Today’s pronouncement — that this controversy over the fee is still pending below — clearly leaves undisturbed the terms of the employer/employee settlement. That approved accord remains unassailed and is hence legally unclouded. It stands protected from re-examination below, although the bar of finality cannot, on this record, be extended to embrace the dispute between claimant and his lawyer. In short, the twenty-day jurisdictional cutoff is not invocable here by the lawyer against his client to defeat the latter’s plea for a judicial determination of the fee’s quantum in an ancillary post-settlement proceeding to be conducted between the claimant and his counsel of record as forensic adversaries.

¶ 1 The issue in this case is whether the Workers’ Compensation Court’s order on which this appeal is based, in so far as it purports to adjudicate the amount of attorney fees, is an appealable order subject to this Court’s review. We find that the issue of the proper amount of attorney fees remains pending before the Workers’ Compensation Court and, as such, is not ripe for review by the appellate courts.

I. Facts

¶ 2 On April 2, 1992, the Workers’ Compensation Court found Willie B. Rowland (Rowland) to be permanently totally disabled and awarded Rowland $208.27 per week in compensation and back compensation of $2,707.51. Wilson Jones (Jones), the respon*1283dent in this appeal and Rowland’s attorney at the time of the award, was paid a twenty percent lump sum fee of $20,827.00 by Rowland’s employer, the City of Tulsa (City). The City was to recoup the lump-sum attorney fee payment by deducting ten percent of Rowland’s weekly award until the total was recovered.

¶ 3 On February 16, 1996, Rowland and the employer entered into an agreement whereby Rowland was paid $135,000.00 in exchange for releasing the City from the remainder of the payments under the 1992 order. The agreement provided for a reduction of the $135,000.00 by twenty percent for attorney fees. The settlement worksheet, signed by both Rowland and Jones, shows that Jones was paid attorney fees of $22,-840.00 out of the $135,000.00 settlement. The $22,840.00 represents the amount of $27,000.00, which is twenty percent of $135,-000.00, less the amount that Rowland had reimbursed the City of the $20,827.00 lump-sum fee previously paid to Jones.

¶ 4 Before the order approving the agreement was filed of record, Rowland sent a letter to the administrator and the presiding judge for the Workers’ Compensation Court. The letter was received by both the judge and the administrator on March 6, 1996. In his letter, Rowland alleged that under the agreement his attorney would receive more than the statutorily allowed twenty percent of the award. On March 12, 1996, an order was filed approving the joint settlement agreement.

¶ 5 Rowland’s letter was treated as a motion to modify the order approving the joint settlement, and a hearing was held on May 30, 1996. Four months later, on September 27, the trial tribunal ruled that it did not have authority to modify the order approving the settlement more than twenty days after the order was mailed to the parties. The Court of Civil Appeals sustained the trial court’s decision denying Rowland relief. This Court granted certiorari.1

II. Analysis

¶ 6 The Workers’ Compensation Court treated Rowland’s letter as a motion to modify its order approving the settlement agreement. Neither the fact that the request for relief was in the form of a letter nor the treatment given it by the Workers’ Compensation Court is determinative of its true nature. Rowland states in the letter that he is asking for a hearing on the amount of attorney fees and stating that under the agreement his attorney would receive more than the statutory maximum. The letter not only requests a hearing but revokes Rowland’s consent to the amount of attorney fees as recited in the joint agreement.

¶ 7 The basis of a joint petition settlement is the parties’ agreement to its terms. After Rowland suspected that the settlement allowed an attorney fee in excess of the statutory maximum,2 he withdrew his consent to the amount of attorney fees and requested review of the matter. After he withdrew his consent to the amount of attorney fees, the joint petition settlement in so far as it settled the amount of attorney fees was no longer before the trial tribunal for its approval.

¶ 8 In cases such as this where the issue of attorney fees is in controversy, a judge of the Workers’ Compensation Court must hear and consider all the evidence pertaining to the issue.3 After the hearing, the judge enters an order determining the proper amount of attorney fees.4 Only after an order adjudicating the issue is entered does the matter become ripe for appeal.5 Because, in the present case, the amount of attorney fees was never properly presented for approval to or adjudicated by the Workers’ Compensation Comí, the order of March 12, 1996, was a nullity as to attorney fees, and this Court lacks appellate jurisdiction of the matter.

¶ 9 The trial tribunal and the Court of Civil Appeals both found that the Workers’ Compensation Court was without authority to modify the order under section 3.6 of title 85. Section 3.6 states that an order of the Workers’ Compensation Court becomes final twen*1284ty days after a copy is mailed to the parties.6 Because Rowland revoked the part of the joint petition settlement addressing attorney fees before an approval order was filed, the twenty day time period did not begin to run as to the matter of the amount of attorney fees.7 Thus, the Workers’ Compensation Court and the Court of Civil Appeals erred.

III. Conclusion

¶ 10 Because the order appealed from in the present ease was not ripe for review by the appellate courts as to the amount of attorney fees, the Court of Civil Appeal was without jurisdiction to determine the merits of the appeal. The Court of Civil Appeals’ opinion is vacated. The appeal is dismissed for lack of an appealable order. The letter seeking review should be treated as revoking the joint petition settlement as to the amount of attorney fees, leaving the issue pending before the Workers’ Compensation Court.

CERTIORARI PREVIOUSLY GRANTED; COURT OF CIVIL APPEALS’ OPINION VACATED; APPEAL DISMISSED FOR LACK OF APPELLATE JURISDICTION; MATTER REMANDED FOR FURTHER PROCEEDINGS.