Choosing a solicitor is a big decision; and it’s a decision all claimants should take some time to consider. But there are certain alleys in road accident claims you should avoid – and now, this is even more important!
At the end of April this year, the protocol for road accidents changed. A road accident is submitted and dealt with through an online portal established by the Ministry of Justice that we solicitors and the insurers progress the claims through. Generally, it’s a great new system, as it makes the whole process a lot quicker. But we have found a significant flaw that we hope to be rectified shortly. According to the powers that be for the process, changing your solicitor part way through a claim, currently, cannot be done – So why is this a problem?
Well, turning back to the different options you can go down, there are certain companies you must avoid. The main one is dealing in any part with your insurers. More often than not, your insurers will ring you after an accident and offer to deal with your personal injury claim.
They will usually advise you that you have the benefit of legal expense insurance, which means you can be allocated one of their panel of solicitors to deal with the claim. Sounds great, right? We would all implicitly trust such a service from our insurers, as they should be on our side. In actual fact, it can be highly destructive to a claim.
What your insurers actually do is sell the details of the claim to one of their panel solicitors for a referral fee.
It’s the highest bidding firm that grabs the case, so more often than not the fee they pay is high. Sometimes the fee can be anywhere up to £800 – that’s the base running cost for a claim!
The solicitor cannot recover this fee from the other side, which means this fee is paid for with the running costs of your claim. This leaves the claimant with a much poorer service; they simply cannot afford to spend too much on running the claim.
The problems we often hear about are firms not calling clients back, lengthy periods of time between updates (the term months is often used a lot!), and the major one is valuing the claim. With less money to spend on the claim, they have less money to research the true value of the claim, and less money to spend on fighting for the maximum you are entitled to get.
In some instances you’ll be lucky to even have a solicitor dealing with the case at all! An unqualified claims handler is not a solicitor – and is not equipped to deal with the claim.
Insurers for the other side will try and save as much money as possible, so their initial offers are often quite low. But with less money to spend on fighting it, they may end up advising you to accept a low offer if it’s close to, or fits within, the right bracket.
Another major issue (and this one bugs me a lot!) is that they fail to recover all heads of claim.
They are unlikely to recover losses such as care and assistance – money you can claim back for other people assisting you whilst you are injured. It’s usually calculated at around £6 – £7 per hour. So imagine how much your missing out on if you partner or family member has had to help you for a few weeks for 4-5 hours a day…
The new portal is designed to make the process a lot quicker and more cost effective; which means less cost recovery for solicitors. This is fair enough – but when your running costs have been squandered on a referral fee, that’s even less resources they now have for the claim!
But the major issue, as stated above, is the changeover issue.
We were advised recently that once a claim has been submitted, the claimant cannot change solicitor. We get calls daily from people who have cottoned on to the poor service and low offers, and we give them the right advice.
They inevitably transfer their case to us, as the claimant is supposed to have the freedom of choice to select a solicitor at any point during the case. We then ensure they get the maximum compensation in the quickest possible time. How we are going to be able to assist the victims of legal expense insurance now, we are unsure.
So be extra careful – as you may end up getting stuck with a poor solicitor!
We are in the process of bringing this matter to the attention of the relevant regularity authorities.
We are an independent firm of specialist personal injury lawyers. We are openly against referral fees, as it’s not fair for the claimant to end up with less money and a poor service because their insurers can make a quick buck on selling the claim.
The last thing you want is to be stuck with a solicitor that turns out to have paid for your case. So be wise – and choose your own independent firm. For more advice on this issue, don’t hesitate to contact us on 0800 634 7575 for a free, no obligation chat.