Easing the financial pain of injury

Published on Friday 26 September 2008 19:26

EACH week The Scotsman will give you a top ten guide to pertinent financial issues.

The term “no win, no fee” is often associated with high-profile court cases, but in reality the system is a proven common process used by members of the public to achieve cost-effective access to civil justice, with most claims settled out of court.

David Sandison, a partner in Lawford Kidd, a firm of leading personal injury solicitors based in Edinburgh, offers ten tips on understanding no win, no fee.

1 THE BASICS NO WIN, no fee, means that anyone who has suffered a loss, for example through a road accident, can approach a solicitor or a claims company who will investigate the claim and – if valid – take steps to settle it. If the solicitor or claims company believes the claim will be successful, and pursues the matter, the claimant will not be charged if no compensation is recovered.

2 NO WIN, NO FEE, NOT NO WIN, COST FREE ALTHOUGH most claims are settled out of court, many solicitors and claims companies are still likely to take a deduction from the eventual compensation package for doing the work on a no win, no fee basis, particularly in the few instances when the case has to go to court.

3 WHY ARE EXPENSES CHARGED? THE solicitor will have all the legal work paid for by the insurance company acting for the individual or organisation against whom the claim is being made. The reason expenses are charged to the client is that the lawyer will not get paid for non-legal costs (such as obtaining medical reports) until the matter is settled, which could take several months – much longer if the case is litigated.

Under Law Society rules, law firms (unlike claims companies) are not permitted to base their charges on a percentage of the compensation but on the basis of work done. This might mean charges are minimal in comparison – say, 500 on a compensation payout of 10,000.

4 MOST COMMON CASES ROAD-TRAFFIC accidents are probably the most common. For example, a driver is shunted by someone else and suffers a whiplash injury, leading to pain, a period of medication and absence from work for several weeks or months. His lifestyle may be severely limited and he may lose overtime or bonus payments and have to cancel a holiday. Other common examples are accidents in the workplace, industrial diseases and social accidents, such as a supermarket customer sustaining a back injury after slipping on a wet floor.

5 THE ADVANTAGES THE system enables an innocent victim of someone else’s negligence to pursue a claim without concerns about initial financial outlays and to estimate, with a fair degree of accuracy, the net amount they are likely to receive once the claim is settled. The system enables claims to be processed in a manner that minimises worry and inconvenience for claimants.

6 WHERE TO START? THERE are numerous newspaper and television advertisements or entries in Yellow Pages for solicitors or claims companies dealing in accident and personal injury. A web search on “personal injury claims” will produce scores of options.

7 SOLICITOR OR CLAIMS COMPANY? MOST claims companies will pass each claim received on to a solicitor as a matter of course, so by going straight to a solicitor you are likely to start the ball rolling earlier.

Many people initially contact a claims company because they are worried that going directly to a solicitor will cost them more money, either initially or when matters are concluded. In practice, this will not be the case.

8 OTHER CONSIDERATIONS BEFORE making a decision, it may be worthwhile trying to find out who will be handling your claim – a para-legal, a trainee or a fully-qualified solicitor. The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers has a register of credited specialists at www.apil.org.uk. Two other good sources of information on personal injury claims solicitors are the Chambers Directory and Legal 500. Both are somewhat weighty tomes, but can be found on the internet.

9 WHAT ABOUT MY FAMILY SOLICITOR? COMPENSATION claims are a specialised subject, very different from house conveyancing or drawing up wills. So before asking the family solicitor to take on such a case, investigate what expertise they have in this field.

10 ALTERNATE OPTIONS NOT everyone who wishes to claim for injury or loss needs to go down the no win, no fee route.

Membership of a trade union gives many individuals access to a first-class legal aid scheme that may also cover family members and they could end up not having to pay a penny from compensation towards expenses.

Unknown to the policyholder who rarely reads the full schedule, many motor and household insurance policies guarantee to pay legal expenses in the event of a compensation claim, which might be better than a separate claim on a no win, no fee basis.