Most accidents, except for minor road traffic accidents, will be dealt with under the Pre-Action Protocol for Personal Injury Claims. This Protocol has been designed to achieve a speedy end to your compensation claim.
The first stage is to produce a letter of claim which outlines your accident precisely, details your injuries, and confirms why we believe the other side were negligent. Your expert injury lawyers will produce this for you and this letter should not take long at all. Once it is ready your lawyers will send it to the Defendant who then have a period of 21 days to acknowledge the letter of claim. In the most part, Defendant’s acknowledge this letter well within those 21 days and then either pass it ot their insurers or solicitors to deal with.
Once the Defendant has acknowledged the Letter of Cliam they are then allowed a period of three months to investigate your claim. In other words, to make sure that your accident happened and to establish whether they consider that they are at fault and should pay you compensation. The important thing to note is that, although they have this three month investigatory period, this in no way means that the investigations will definitely take three months – they could be over a done within in a week or a month, it really depends on the Defendant. At The Injury Lawyers, to make sure you have piece of mind, we will regularly chase the other side for their position on liability, to make sure we get their response as soon as possible.
At The Injury Lawyers we will only take on your personal injury claim if we genuinely believe that it will be successful. As such we fully expect the Defendant’s admission of liability within the three month investigatory period. Once we receive this we will refer you to a medical expert who will compile a legal medical report for you. This will be done at a time and place convenient to you and as soon as possible. Your lawyers will then await the medical report back from the expert, have a look through it and provide you with a copy to make sure you are happy with it. If you are, your lawyers will then disclose the medical report to the Defendant and invite offers to settle within 21 days.
All in all, your claim for compensation could be over in just a few months, but we generally say that a period of six to nine months is typical. What we can say for certain is that at The Injury Lawyers we will do everything we can to make sure you ge the compensation you deserve as quickly as possible.
We are open between the hours of 9am and 10pm on weekdays and 9am and 5pm on the weekend should you wish to discuss any potential claim you may have with us or should you wish to gain an update on the progress of your case.