You may think that you know what no win no fee means – i.e. it does what it says on the tin – you lose your claim and you do not have to pay a penny. But, what happens if you win your claim? Furthermore, how does it actually work?
Well I hope to shed some light on the above in this following blog:
If you lose your claim…
So, as I have mentioned above, if you lose your claim, with a proper no win no fee agreement you should not have to pay a penny of your solicitor’s costs. For the sake of clarity, solicitor’s costs are the cost of your solicitor’s time in running your claim; this can run into thousands of pounds.
There are, however, some solicitors that may charge you if your claim loses – I have heard stories of solicitors saying that if the claim goes through court and it loses, their client is liable for the court costs.
The reason why firms such as us can guarantee that we do not charge our clients is that we often ensure that insurance is in place to cover our losses, such as in court scenarios above. We also only take on claims that we feel a have good prospects of winning – so we don’t expect to lose. If it does lose, we agree to not recover any costs from you.
If you win your claim…
Should you win your claim, you should also ensure that you do not have to pay anything as well. The reason for this is that winning a claim allows your solicitor to claim their costs from the other side in most cases. This being said, solicitors quite often are unable to recover 100% of their costs from the other side; so you should ensure in your agreement that their costs are restricted to whatever can be recovered, meaning your solicitor cannot come back to you and charge you for any fees they fail to recover.
Furthermore, if you win your claim, you should ensure that you receive 100% of your compensation with no deductions whatsoever. Again, I have heard stories of some solicitors taking as much as 25% of client’s compensation even when they are entitled to claim their fees back from the other side!
At The Injury Lawyers we work under a genuine no win no fee agreement where our costs are restricted to what we can recover from the other side, and our client’s receive 100% of their compensation. These facts are all confirmed in black and white in our genuine no win no fee agreement – so you don’t just have to take our verbal word for it.
If you require any further information about the no win no fee system at The Injury Lawyers feel free to give us a call.
