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It helps to go to your doctor or a hospital / walk in centre after an accident. If you have been speaking to some personal injury lawyers, they may well have advised you to go and have some form of medical attention ASAP if you haven’t already. It can help your lawyer during the process of pursuing your claim for compensation.

Here’s why: the value of your claim is based on the severity and longevity of your pain, suffering, and loss of amenity. This is known as General Damages. On top of that you are entitled to claim for losses and expenses, known as Special Damages. For this article, we will stick to General Damages.

The way we value your claim is to instruct a suitable medical expert to see you for an appointment and produce a report that we then use to value your claim. This report is going to form as the basis for how much your claim for General Damages will be worth. It is therefore very important!
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It’s so common for people to want to know how much they might be awarded for making a claim for compensation. The fact is, it’s very hard to tell right from the start of the claim, as it’s all based on medical evidence and losses. So, to help you out, here is a quick guide on the sorts of things we look at when valuing a claim for compensation.

The Injury

You can, of course, claim for the injury. The amount is based on the severity and length of any pain, suffering, and loss of amenity. Generally speaking, the more you suffer the more we get for you. We value the claim based on medical evidence which we obtain from a suitable qualified expert. If you suffer a broken bone, you will normally be seen by an orthopaedic expert. If you sustained a laceration or a burn, you would commonly see a plastic surgeon.
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If you are pursuing a personal injury compensation claim then you probably want to know the possible value of your claim (i.e. how much compensation you will receive). You may receive something called a “pre-medical offer” from the Defendant.

A pre-medical offer is simply an offer to settle your claim before you have been examined by a qualified and professional medical expert. It’s important to note that the Defendant is not being nice or amicable by making a pre-medical offer; it’s more than likely they’re only trying to save themselves some money.
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The amount of compensation you are entitled to receive is all about the severity of the injury, the affect it has on your everyday life, and how long you will be suffering for. On top of that, there are losses and expenses to consider – like lost earnings from time off work, medical expenses, treatment fees, etc.

This all takes medical evidence and collating your individual losses. It can end up being a great deal of work. So when people ask us the question “how much can I claim for – just give me a ballpark figure – I won’t hold you to it!” it’s not as easy as it sounds. For straightforward injuries we can perhaps give you averages and statistics, but it still maybe nowhere near the figure you’re actually entitled to receive.
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This is a fairly common question that is asked of our expert claims team here at The Injury Lawyers. The answer is no; you don’t HAVE to go to hospital if you don’t need to.

It is highly recommended that you see some form of medical expert. You don’t have to go to hospital if you can see your GP for an appointment instead. As long as you have some form of medical attention which leads to your medical records being updated with information about the injuries you have sustained and how they were caused, you should be fine.

The reason you need medical attention is that we will later value your claim for compensation based on medical evidence from a report we will obtain from a suitable expert. It is a great help to the expert to see your medical records to show that you sought help after sustaining the injuries. They can use this as part of the report.
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People often have the misconception that claiming for compensation requires you to be seriously injured, or at least in a position where something is broken and a hospital was needed for treatment. This is not the case – and I’m not talking about injuries that are far worse, like amputations or brain damage; I’m talking about sprains, bruising, and other injuries under the scope of soft tissue damage or lacerations.

The answer is simple – no you don’t have to have broken something, and you can claim for what we would class as minor injuries. There are two potential roads to go down – firstly, if your injury lasts more than four to six weeks, it should be worth at least £1,000. As long as it is worth at least this much, we can make a compensation claim as we are entitled to recover our legal fees from the other side. If it’s worth less than that, you can still claim but the case would likely fall within the realms of the Small Claims Track. For this, a solicitor cannot normally recover fees so you might have to go it alone in a small claims court.
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Here at The Injury Lawyers we deal solely with personal injury claims – we are therefore experts in the personal injury field. If you are wondering whether you have to be off work to make a claim for compensation, put simply, the answer is no. If you are injured in an accident that was not your fault, you could be eligible to claim compensation. It does not matter whether or not you took time off work.

It could be that your injuries did not affect your work and therefore you may have been able to continue in your employment. With minor injuries, for example minor whiplash injuries, people may not have to take any time off work. Whether or not you do need to take time off work will depend on the nature and severity of your injuries and also the nature of the job that you do. If you do heavy manual work then you may be less able to fulfil your duties. However before taking time off speak to your employer as they may be able to offer you an alternative role while you get better. This is often referred to as “light duties”. You may be able to work but you may not be able to do anything heavy.
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To be honest, with some companies it can be a pain; which is why we make the process simple. What you need to avoid are claims management companies, or these accident management specialists and accident advice services – they’re not lawyers, just middlemen who refer you over to a law firm for a fee. That fee is either payable by you, or is taken out the budget for running the claim, which can leave you with a rubbish service!

There is also an obvious delay as the company basically passes your claim to the highest bidding law firm. You don’t want to be in a situation where someone takes your basic details and then promises a call back within 48 hours – you want to know right from the start if you can make a claim, and most people want the ball rolling right away!

Achieving this is simple – call an independent law firm like us directly. As we are a real law firm, we won’t be passing your details around. We assess the claim, and then we actually represent you for the claim if you want us to do so. We don’t believe in waiting around – in the majority of cases we can assess your claim over the phone, and either get some paperwork out to you by first class post on the same day, or start the claim there and then.
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If you fall over and sustain injury on someone else’s property or in public, then you may be entitled to claim for compensation. Courts look at each case on its own merit and although drink can be a factor, it does not necessarily mean that you will not be able to make a claim if you fall over whilst intoxicated.

First of all we would consider what caused you to fall. Did you fall due to a defect in the pavement? If so you may have a claim for compensation, even if you had been drinking before or at the time of the accident. There is no strict rule saying that people under the influence of alcohol cannot make a compensation claim. Some people may be very drunk which causes them to fall over for no apparent reason. Other people may have had one or two drinks and trip on a defective pavement or pothole. Clearly there is a big difference here. Just because you have had a drink, it does not mean that you cannot claim.
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There are a lot of compensation solicitors out there ready and willing to take on your case. However, unfortunately things are not always what they seem – something that advertises itself as a firm of lawyers, may actually be a claims management company that then refers you across to one of their “panel” of lawyers; so the people you speak to initially may not be legal professionals at all!

Usually these companies will put in their small print “we are a cohesion of lawyers” or a “group of lawyers” or something similar, which is a posh way of saying we are a claims management company who put you in touch with lawyers that we have chosen. Of course, this seems an absurd way of doing things as you can simply go to a solicitor direct and cut out the middleman! Not many people hire a middleman to find them a dentist, hairdresser or accountant; you simply go to them direct. So why should finding a compensation lawyer be any different?
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