The Injury Lawyers – THE 100% Compensation Injury Lawyers!
£1,000 a case? £10,000 a case? There’s a lot of stuff in the media about lawyers raking in the cash at the expense of employers, the taxpayer through council and NHS claims, and car insurers causing premiums to skyrocket and lawyers ending up being the bad guys.
But what the media won’t tell you is that the cold hard truth is that we lawyers don’t make anywhere near as much money as you might think. Read on for the real truth!
Some Simple Examples
What the media will never tell you is about the story of poor old John Smith who suffered a genuine whiplash injury at the hands of a reckless driver, resulting in months of pain and inconvenience and even some time off work – receiving £2,500 in compensation with his legal fees being around £500 + VAT.
They won’t tell you about Joe Bloggs who broke his arm when his employer told him to work on a conveyer belt that hadn’t been isolated properly, resulting in time off work and the obvious problems that go with a broken arm – receiving £6,500 in compensation and his lawyers getting just £900 + VAT.
What they will tell you about is Sally Smith who received just £5,000 for a minor medical malpractice injury caused by a hospital and the lawyers netting a huge £30,000 in fees! So how are these examples so different, and what are they based on?
Fixed Fees
For most cases we get fixed fees – the two examples above for the road accident and work accident are examples where our fees are fixed at base rates of less than a grand! This can apply in simple cases where the insurers admit liability early. We can’t claim anymore than the fixed amount we’re entitled to. If they try and defend the claim, we got to fight them for it which costs more money in legal fees and will push up the fees we need to actually fight for the case!
The medical negligence example, which isn’t based on any factual case by the way, is a stark comparison to the fixed fees. But how can this happen?
They fight, we get more fees
Sometimes insurers or solicitors / claims representatives will fight tooth and nail to avoid a payout. The reasons are fairly simple – they don’t want to pay you compensation so they can safeguard their profits / their budgets, and because it looks bad on their statistics. So where they can, they will fight you for the case.
This can lead to needing to spend years fighting them, spending thousands of pounds on experts to prove that you have a claim, and perhaps even going to court. All this is at the expense in both time and finances of your solicitor who, if they’re working on a No Win, No Fee basis, is taking a massive risk that could cost the law firm thousands of pounds if the case loses. Think about that.
So if the lawyer ends up eventually winning the claim and overturning their defence, we will have spent thousands of pounds in time and money on trying to prove the claim. That’s why the fees can end up being so much, and the value of the claim is always based on the severity and length of the injuries so there isn’t a vast amount of variation in that. If you were to break down that £30K, a third of that could be just for experts’ fees and barrister’s fees, court fees, and all sorts. The base legal fees that lawyers actually get could be in the region of £8k or so but in the past we would get double that if we take it to trial and win because we get a Success Fee from the other side.
A Success Fee is designed to help offset the cost of the losing cases if we end up having to fight them and end up winning. Now, we can’t recover them from the other side anymore, but that’s beside the point.
So, the next time you read yet another story riddled with tired clichés like the compensation culture and whiplash epidemic about law firms raking in the cash, you’re having the wool pulled over your eyes! Fixed fees have been around for years, and in the cases where we get loads of legal fees, it s all down to the opponent fighting and dragging it out for years and years, racking up the costs in time and money for us lawyers.
In England and Wales, the fixed fees for most types of claims are as little as £500 + VAT. The insurance industry is worth billions, but the personal injury claiming world certainly isn’t anywhere even close to that! Law firms are going under left right and centre – but the insurers certainly are making plenty of money.
