PERSONAL INJURY & ACCIDENT COMPENSATION

No-Win, No-Fee

No-Win, No-Fee Compensation Claims.

For many years, the expression No-Win No-Fee has been used by solicitors and claims management companies.  But what does it really mean?

No-Win, No-Fee, an explanation.

If you begin a compensation claim, the personal injury solicitor representing you will most certainly offer you a ‘Condition Fee Agreement’.  This is usually abbreviated to ‘CFA’.  In this agreement, the solicitor will only receive a fee if s/he wins your case.  Simply, the fee is conditional on the case being successful.

If the case is lost, then there will be no fee paid to the lawyers.  Careful analysis of the phrase means if the case is won, the claimant has to pay a fee.  This is in part true, but in normal circumstances the fee or ‘costs’ will be paid by the losing side, typically an insurance company.  When a case settles, the solicitor gets compensation for your injuries and passes that on to you.  They also receive their costs and disbursement for all the work they have undertaken on your claim from the losers.

You should never ever pay anything to cover a solicitor’s costs.  None of our panel of solicitors will ever ask you to pay any of your compensation towards their costs in a normal straight forwards claim.  You will keep 100% of our compensation.

The CFA that you sign at the start of the claim is a legally binding agreement between you and your solicitor.  As ever, it is quite detailed and most CFAs follow a suggested form at, regulated by the Law Society.

In the CFA, you are legally liable to pay the solicitor his costs, but the solicitor looks to the defendant to pay the costs.  We have never ever had a Client who has had to pay costs for a standard personal injury claim settlement.

Exceptions to the Rule.

So, in normal circumstances, you the Client will not have to pay any costs, where a solicitor can get them from the defendants.  In tow exceptions, the solicitor cannot legally recover any or all of his costs from the other side.  Those two exceptions are:

MIB Untraced Driver Claims.

If you are the victim of an untraced driver claim, then your solicitor only receives a small fixed fee from the Motorist’s Insurance Bureau.  This fee does not cover all the work your personal injury lawyer will have to do.  Therefore, the solicitor will agree a fee based on a percentage of your compensation.  Do not confuse this with an ‘uninsured’ MIB claim.  MIB uninsured claims are dealt with in the usual manner, where you receive all of your compensation.  The difference is that with an uninsured claim, the solicitor can obtain his costs from the MIB and does not have to burden you.  The untraced-driver scheme does not work on this principle.

For more about the MIB claims, go to our MIB Compensation Claims page click here.

Criminal Injury Compensation Claims.

If you have been a victim of a criminal assault, you may be able to claim compensation from a government body called the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, (the CICA).

If you want someone to act on your behalf, you will usually agree a no-win, no-fee agreement at the start of the claim.  The CICA do not pay for the cost of representation and hence, if you want someone to act for you then you will have to pay a percentage of your compensation to your representative in consideration of the work they undertake to obtain your compensation.  Please go to our sister-site, www.criminal-injury-compensation-claims.org.uk for complete details about making a CICA claim.

Legal Expenses Insurance.

When you begin a personal injury claim (excluding an untraced MIB claim or an uninsured MIB, or a CICA claim) your solicitor will investigate whether you have Legal Expenses Insurance.  This is a specialist policy that will protect you against having to pay costs if your case goes to court and you lose.  Often, claimants will have this policy attached to their motor policy, house contents policy, buildings insurance policy or even Trades Union membership.  Your solicitor will ask you to check for you have this policy.  If you do have this insurance, your solicitor will ask for a copy of the policy.  This type of policy is called a ‘before the event’ policy.  Your legal expense insurers may suggest that you use their nominated solicitor.  Under no circumstances do this!!!

You are not obliged to use their solicitor and should never do so.  The insurers want you to use their nominated solicitor because they receive a fee from the solicitor.  This is why you should always use an independent solicitor of any insurer.

If you do not have any legal expenses insurance, then your solicitor will put this in place for you.  You must never pay for this policy, nor should you take out a loan to pay for it.  All our panel solicitors will arrange this policy free of charge, irrespective of cost.  Even in the most straight forward of cases, you may need this policy at some stage in the legal proceedings.  All our solicitors are experts in this specialist area of law.  Policies that are put in place after the accident has happened are called ‘after the event’ policies.

By the way, using your legal expense insurance does not affect the policy it is attached to.  So you will not suffer financially in any way if you use an existing policy.

Legal expense policies are not suitable for MIB cases or CICA cases.  In any event, one of our panel solicitors will give you clear advice on how to proceed.  They are experts in what they do and that is why they are members of our panel.

If you want further advice on any of these matters, please telephone us on free phone 0800 16 3683.

We can give you fast advice on how to deal with your claim.