When DuPont agreed to pay $12 million to resolve its role in Rhode Island's lead-paint lawsuit last year, the company was adamant that none of the money go to the law firm that the state hired to press the lawsuit. Normally, when a lawsuit is settled, the lawyers who brought the case receive a portion of the settlement as their fee. But DuPont, facing lead-paint lawsuits around the country, insisted that the deal not be called a settlement, says Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch. And that meant paying no legal fees to Motley Rice, the private law firm that the state had hired to sue companies that made lead paint. The agreement, Lynch said, was the first time a paint company had ever paid any money as a result of lead-paint litigation. Lawyers for Motley Rice, who said they saw the historic value of getting a company to pay money to help clean up the lead-paint problem, agreed to waive their fee.