Whilst most no win, no fee agreements are individual to the firm of lawyers, and can therefore have varying terms and conditions, the principles of the agreement can be standard. So, if you are wondering what a no win, no fee agreement really entails and you would like a general overview on it, please read on for advice.
This is but general guidance though as the agreements will normally have their own clauses and terms, so this is just a very brief reference guide for you.
No win, no fee should mean no fees to pay if you lose the claim
The whole point of a no win, no fee agreement is that you pay no fees if the claim doesn’t win. It is designed to protect you from having to pay a legal bill that could run in to thousands of pounds. If there was the risk that you would have to pay money if a claim lost then most people would not bother making a claim.
For many the risk wouldn’t be worth it, and we can’t always guarantee that you will win the claim from the start.
How does a no win, no fee work?
It should mean that your lawyer will write off their legal fees if the claim fails to succeed! There are common clauses of course – if a case failed because you cancelled the claim or because you tried to be dishonest or exaggerated your claim, then that will normally lead to you being billed! This is for obvious reasons.
But if a claim fails to succeed because the other side end up having a solid defence or we lose the case at court then the idea is that we agree to write off our legal fees so you do not have to pay them. It means we do not get paid for our work at all, as we cannot claim the fees from insurance or anything else.
Why do lawyers offer no win, no fee agreements if we lose money?
It’s a good question – but it’s one that can easily be answered.
I said above that people would be put off claiming if there was a risk of paying so that reason still rings true. But we also carefully consider cases before accepting them on a no win, no fee basis so we do have a logical way of looking at what cases we take on and which we don’t.
Here at The Injury Lawyers we normally only take on a claim if there are prospects of success so it’s up to us as the law firm to accept the risk that we might not get paid. If we win a case then we can normally recover fees which can also help to offset the losses from losing cases.
So, we assess the merits of the case, and we decide whether we are prepared to take the risk of it.
In many cases it doesn’t cost us a great deal of money to get a case set up and submitted, and then see what the response is from the other side. We may then at that point discontinue on a no win, no fee basis as opposed to fighting a potentially hopeless case at court, so we can also minimise the costs amount this way too.
What are the catches?
I can’t speak for other firms but we are not in to catches and hidden fees ourselves. Our no win, no fee agreement does exactly what it says on the tin, and that’s that. We consider the risks of the case and we only accept it on our genuine no win, no fee policy if we are happy to do so.
Call us 0800 634 7575, or if you prefer why not arrange a callback from one of our team, for instant FREE advice on whether you have a compensation claim to make!