HOW IS MY SOLICITOR PAID WHEN I WIN MY CLAIM?
We pursue claims on your behalf on a No-Win-No-Fee basis. What this means is that if you win compensation then the other side’s insurance company will pay us our legal costs in addition to what you receive. They are two separate sums of money. You keep what is yours and we keep what is ours!
We take NO deductions from the money you receive and you take away 100% of what is yours.*
Before asking you to sign up to the Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA) or No-Win-No-Fee agreement as it is otherwise known we will be very happy to meet with you for an initial FREE consultation to find out what happened and work out how we can help you.
We can meet with you either at any of our offices or we can travel to see you at home or even if you are in hospital.
* If after instructing us you do not co-operate with us to help pursue your claim and we are unable to recover all of the legal costs we have incurred on your behalf (which we would hope is extremely unlikely!) then we reserve the right to make a deduction from your compensation. However we will always attempt to agree this with you first in the event of this happening. However we would like to reassure you that we only do this in the most extreme of cases! Full terms and conditions are available on request.
BUT WHAT HAPPENS IF I LOSE MY CLAIM?
When we meet with you and have found out what has happened we can usually give you a pretty good idea of whether you will win or not.
However things can change during the conduct of a claim such as new information comes to light that can affect the prospects of success.
We can never promise that you will win your claim however we can assure you that if we don’t believe you have reasonable prospects of winning from the start then we won’t be acting for you. We are of course only going to be paid if we win the claim and therefore have a financial incentive in trying to help you win it!
However just occasionally people lose their claims for compensation even if we did believe you were going to have a good chance of winning from the start.
On occasions like this we will have investigated with you at the start whether you had any form of insurance cover to protect you against having to pay the other side’s legal costs if you lost the claim.
There are various types of insurance policy available to cover you against this risk of losing. Such cover can even include trade union membership or even protection available under your motor or household insurance policies. Please leave it up to us to contact the union or the various insurers on your behalf and we will find out whether you are eligible for such protection under this Before The Event Legal Expense Insurance (BTE cover).
In the event that you have none of this pre-existing insurance cover then we can set up a policy for you known as After The Event Legal Expense Insurance (ATE cover). We have an existing relationship with such an insurer and therefore technically have an interest in recommending that you use their policy. However we do not receive any direct commission payments from them.
The purpose of having this BTE or ATE cover is to ensure that it is the legal expense insurer who will have to pay the other side’s costs not you if you lose. This means you will not be out of pocket if this unfortunate event happens.
Of course where you do have insurance cover there is inevitably a cost involved. Insurance companies must make money too. With BTE cover on either or both your motor and household insurance policies you will already have paid for that cover in addition to the main insurance cover provided. Few people realise that they have already paid for this unless they look at their policy documentation carefully.
However where ATE cover is concerned you will be required to confirm at the outset that you will be responsible for payment of the ATE insurance premium at thee end of the claim and only if you win. If you do win then the cost of that premium will be reclaimed as part of your legal costs and in fact will be refunded to you once we too have been paid some time after you have received your compensation.
If however you have been unsuccessful in your claim - though you initially confirmed at the outset that you would repay the premium at the end of the claim - as previously stated you would not have to pay the insurance premium whatsoever. Hence you walk away without owing anything to anyone even though you have sadly lost the claim. At least on that basis insult isn’t being added to injury.
