Many injuries can leave you feeling debilitated. If the injury is of a particularly severe nature you may not be able to go to work. This could affect you financially; you could even lose your job!
The Claims process is straightforward. We can initially provide you with free no obligation legal advice regarding your potential claim. The first stage of a road traffic accident claim is to collate the details of your accident. These details are the inputted to an online portal known as the Road Traffic Accident Portal and form a Claims Notification Form which is a document submitted to the Third Party insurers.
In road traffic accidents the Third Party insurers then have 15 business days to respond to the Claims Notification Form with an admission or denial of liability. Here at The Injury Lawyers we only take on claims that we believe we have a successful chance of winning. If you do not instruct a solicitor to act on your behalf, then the Third Party may approach you directly within the first stage of your claim and offer you a sum of compensation such as £1,100 in order to settle the claim. An offer like this is known as a pre-medical offer which does not take into account supporting medical evidence or the losses you have sustained a result of the accident.
It may seem like a good opportunity, at the time, to accept the offer and settle the claim however you may still be suffering from the accident or the full extent of your injuries may yet to be determined. If you accept the offer it may be deemed as in ‘full and final settlement‘. If you are still suffering from your injuries for the next couple of weeks or even months you will likely not be able to approach the insurer at a later date for more money.
It is more than likely the pre-medical offer you are presented with will be a smaller amount of compensation to the amount you could receive if you had a solicitor acting on your behalf. The offer is usually put forward by the third party insurer to a Claimant as it avoids the insurer having to pay more compensation to you and legal costs to us. If you instructed us to act on your behalf we would fight against the first offer to ensure you receive the maximum amount of compensation you deserve.
Statistically the average settlements can be between £2,500 and £3,000 – with some stats showing solicitors can get you four times more than the first offer!