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No win no fee solicitors

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Personal injury is an unusual area under English law – it is really the only area where a no win no fee agreement generally works very successful both for no win no fee solicitors and for clients, with most personal injury lawyers offering 100% compensation. No win no fee is available in many other areas of law, but doesn’t work nearly as well. An example of this is employment claims. The difficulty with these claims is that there is a general no costs rule in the Employment Tribunal which means that a successful claimant will have to pay any legal fees out of his or her award. With an average Employment Tribunal award at less than £10,000.00 it can easily be the case that the claimant ends up paying all damages over to his or her solicitors.

This no costs rule does not apply to personal injury claims and the other important factor is that, whilst the evidence of witnesses and the claimant and perhaps defendant is important, there is often other evidence available, some quite clear rules regarding for example accidents at work or car accident and road traffic law and medical evidence. consequently, there is often greater visibility on prospects of success with injury claims than, for example, with employment claims.

Another advantage for claimants is that personal injury solicitors will pay out for the expenses of starting and pursuing a claim, such as court fees and medical evidence costs, which would otherwise mean that many would not be able to bring a claim.

One issue to be aware of is that with no win no fee agreements is that the lawyer will have a say in settlement. If the defendant, or more accurately often their insurer, makes an offer which, whilst not at the top end of what might be achieved on a best case scenario at trial, is considered reasonable on a risk/benefit analysis by the lawyer, it may be that the client must accept the lawyer’s decision. This should always be discussed and clarified between solicitor and client at the stage the no win no fee agreement is entered into.

This post courtesy of Waring solicitors, who in addition to their main website also offer injury claims advice via their personal injury claims site.

 

 

 

 

 

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NHS trusts encouraging personal injury claims ?

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NHS trusts ordered to remove ‘no win, no fee’ adverts

There is a growing clamor, and in some cases for understandable reasons, to reign in the worst excesses of the personal injury market.

What is frankly rather ironic and hypocritical is the way in which, when facing anger and criticism about big increases in insurance premiums, particularly car insurance, the insurers pass the buck to personal injury lawyers, notwithstanding that :-

  • they have known about and done little to combat postcode personal injury claims for whiplash
  • they have been earning money by charging lawyers for referrals when their insured’s want to make a claim against another insured’s insurers

The same principle perhaps applies to the hospitals who have been taking in revenue from allowing personal injury lawyers to advertise in official hospital publications. On one level this can’t be justified, that is on the moral level, particularly given that NHS Trusts who allow advertising have shown clever business skills by making any advertising dependent upon the law firm agreeing not to sue that Trust. However, such advertising being allowed does in some way legitimise the encouragement of making claims, and perhaps shifts problems in some cases onto other Trusts and local organizations such as the local council or other public bodies.

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PI claims – an app for that !

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Personal Injury claims – there’s an app for that !

Yes, you guessed it, there’s now a handy mobile app for starting a personal injury claim, and this is really no surprise bearing in mind the market for personal injury claims is now thought to be worth as much as 3 billion pounds a year.

This is an ingenious move and notwithstanding the cynicism about the PI market and so-called ambulance chasing lawyers, this particular app seems to be well thought out and in fact genuinely useful.

When accidents happen, particularly traffic accidents, in the chaos and shock afterwards, it can be very difficult to remember what has happened, who the other parties are, their insurance details, witnesses and so on. This new app, created by 2ergo enables fast and easy collection of the vital data required. In fact, the insurers are welcoming this also as it is likely to assist in weeding out some of the many dodgy claims made each year because the way it is intended to work is that each insurer will have their own app and the customer will complete the details and forward to their insurance company. And best of all, this app is free, although we are not yet able to advise on which operating systems it may work, although we will update on this when we find out more.

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