Will my claim go to court? How long will my claim take? Will I win my claim? All common questions…
Sometimes people find themselves asking these questions; particularly if you feel your claim has been going on for longer than it should. However, the length of the claim can vary significantly depending on a few common factors:
The quality of the injury lawyer you have.
- The severity and length of your suffering.
- The laziness of the other side.
- Whether the other side is defending the claim or not.
- You!
How Good is Your Injury Lawyer?
The quality of the injury lawyer can make a real difference. For example, we here at The Injury lawyers like to think we offer a comparatively quicker service than most other lawyers. We endeavour to update most of our clients at least every 14 days, which means we work on your file more often, and have the opportunity to chase the other side and actively progress your claim on more occasions. Many law firms don’t have a contact policy, or may have one for once a month, for example. Less updates to you means less work on the file. This can cause things to drag out, because the other side needs chasing – trust me!
Whether your lawyer is a specialist injury lawyer can make a difference as well. For example, we are specialist personal injury only lawyers; so we offer a bespoke service that is for personal injury claims, and personal injury claims only! That means we have specialist experience in knowing how to progress a claim faster, and better knowledge to make sure our cases are resolved as quickly as possible.
The level of service offered to you can really make a difference. To make sure you get the best service, we always recommend going to an injury lawyer direct and avoid being referred to one through your insurers or through a claims company. They will receive referral fees from the solicitor they pass you to, and that money comes right out of the costs that should be used to run the claim. That’s less money to spend on speeding your claim up.
However, don’t always assume it’s your lawyers that are the problem:
The longer you suffer, the more we get for you
If you have a long term injury, you will probably find that the claim will last longer. There is a simple reason for this – to maximise your claim for compensation (i.e. ensure you always get the highest amount) your injury lawyer should always advise you to wait until you are fully healed before settling the claim.
We use medical reports and top experts to give their opinion as to how long you should be injured for, but ultimately they are not psychic! If your prognosis is 6 months, we tell you to wait 6 months to ensure you are fully recovered. That way we are guaranteeing you get the most form your claim, and if you are still suffering, we can get more medical evidence to support the ongoing symptoms. If you settle before you have recovered, you risk under settling the claim if you end up suffering past the prognosis period given.
Insurers can be tough to work with!
We often find that insurers are not as responsive as we would like them to be, and we often have to take them to court for missing deadlines. The deadlines are there to be adhered to, and we chase them as much as we can, but we cannot force them to respond in good time. If they end up dragging their heels, we can take court action to force a response or a result but this drags things out. We can only do our best and chase them as much and as reasonably as possible!
Defending your claim
If the other side is denying that they are liable to pay your claim, this will naturally lengthen the process. Ultimately they don’t want to pay you out – so they are going to fight you to make sure you are not paid out. As a result, we have to get expert medical evidence, liaise with Barristers, and possibly get other expert evidence / witness evidence and take the matter to court if needs be. We can’t stop them defending the claim – we can only fight your corner for the case!
You!
The quicker you respond with vital information, the quicker we can do our jobs and get the claim sorted. Whilst we aim to do as much of the legwork as possible, you do have to have some input, and you need to be on hand to provide us with information as and when it is necessary.
Luckily we personally have ways in which we can quicken this up, and we often take most of the information we need right from the start of a case so we can use it later on and save our time and yours.
For expert advice about making a claim, give us a call on 0800 634 75 75 today.
