April 2013 saw the government bury years of access to justice when they stopped lawyers being able to recover all of their client’s legal fees from the opponent if the case wins. The result is that other lawyers are now taking up to 25% from their clients compensation claim to cover a Success Fee which is no longer recoverable. This fee is designed to help fund No Win, No Fee claims and allow people the right to make a claim if they have been injured through potential negligence.
On top of that, lawyers will ask for payment of an After The Event insurance premium as this is no longer recoverable either. This is insurance to protect you from the risk of having to pay costs to the other side if something goes wrong, or if we cannot recover disbursements which are things we pay out for you on a case (like the cost of a medical report or police report).
Most lawyers will take 25% because this is the maximum they are allowed to take from your compensation payout to cover their Success Fee.
But we here at The Injury Lawyers STILL exclusively offer our clients a genuine 100% compensation agreement. And the big question on everyone’s lips is how!
It’s Easy…
We still get paid by the other side, and so do all the lawyers out there who take up to as much as a quarter from your compensation. So we’re not working for free by choosing not to charge a Success Fee to you. We accept the legal fees we are entitled to from the other side, and waive our Success Fee charge so you don’t have to lose any of your payout.
When it comes to the insurance, we self insure your case so you don’t have to pay for a premium. We basically take the risk of having to pay costs to the other side or being unable to recover disbursements.
How can we afford this?
Simple – we take on and win such a high volume of claims that the lower fees work just fine for us. We take the hit instead of you; but unlike many other law firms, we specialise and only represent victims for compensation claims so we are efficient, we’re specialists, and we make the lower fees work.
You still get a fantastic service of course, and our main duty is to get the maximum compensation we can for you. We just don’t like the idea of charging clients so we have decided not to. It’s a commercial decision.
When it comes to the insurance, we’ll let you in on a little secret that other lawyers may not tell you. The April changes actually significantly reduced the risk of having to pay costs to the other side, so there really isn’t much risk involved. We have write off facilities with a lot of agencies we work with that will foot the bill for certain disbursements we cannot recover. So we don’t see the need for insurance in most circumstances. The reduction in risk of being charged was justification by the government for stopping the recovery of insurance premiums. This is all part of what is known as Qualified One Way Costs Shifting.
What’s the catch?
There isn’t one! We put it in black and white in our paperwork that, so long as you comply with the terms of the agreement (e.g. don’t cancel part way through or be dishonest etc – the usual stuff!), we will waive the Success Fee charge and you keep all 100% of your payout. We put in the terms that we cap our personal Success Fee charge at 0%, i.e. nothing, even though the law entitles us to take 25% from you.
Come on, what’s the catch!?
The saying “if something is too good to be true, it usually is” applies in many situations throughout life, but this isn’t one of them. I’ve explained above how we can do it, so hopefully you have an insight as to how we can afford to do this and why we have chosen to do it. For most claims like work accidents and public liability claims, we really do offer a 100% compensation agreement!
