Personal Injury funding
No win, no fee claims
We conduct personal injury and clinical negligence claims on a
“no win, no fee” basis.
Conditional fee agreements are a relatively new way of funding
personal injury claims. You may know them as "no win no fee"
agreements. In a privately funded claim, you would have to pay all
our charges ("costs") for conducting your case up to and including
trial. If the case is won, your opponents ("the defendants") pay
your damages and your legal costs on top. We would then make a
repayment to you in respect of the costs you had paid to us. The
risk is, if the case is lost, you would still have to pay our costs
and the defendants' costs without recovering any damages -
potentially thousands of pounds. It is because of this risk that
many clients were deterred from pursuing personal injury cases in
the past.
Conditional fee agreements
We can now say in certain cases that we will not charge you for
conducting the case up to and including the trial if you lose. We
will take the risk that if the case is lost, the defendants will
not pay our costs.
If you win the case, you will still be liable to pay our costs,
but we will be able to recover all or the large majority of the
costs from the losing defendants.
Success fee
The defendants will also pay a "success fee" on top of your
damages and costs at the end of the case. We can ask for this
because we are taking the risk that we will not be paid and because
we will not receive any of our costs during the conduct of your
case (which could take up to three years). The success fee is based
on a percentage of our costs (inclusive of VAT). The level of the
success fee depends on our assessment of the chances of success in
your case.
Money we have to pay to other people
We may ask you to pay the above ("disbursements") throughout the
case. These could be for medical reports, court costs, engineers'
reports and company searches, travelling expenses and the like. If
you win, your outlay will almost always be repaid by the defendants
in total. If you lose, the insurance policy will cover the cost of
disbursements incurred after the conditional fee agreement is
signed.
Alternatively, you can choose to take out a loan for the
disbursements from a merchant bank offering a scheme specially
tailored for clients with conditional fee agreements. The bank
would pay your disbursements as they arise and charge interest at
12.7% apr. If you win the defendants' should repay all of your
disbursements but not interest. The interest accrued would be
deducted from your damages.
If you lose the insurance company will repay the bank including
any interest outstanding.
Insurance
If you lose the case, you will still be liable to pay the
defendants their legal costs. To guard against this, you can take
out an insurance policy. The insurance premium can range from £265
for simple road traffic accident cases and from £540.75 to £2,000
in industrial disease cases. There will be a higher premium, fixed
on a case by case basis, in clinical negligence claims. Some
insurers charge a renewal premium of between 20% and 30% every 12
months during the conduct of the case. In some cases the insurer
will not ask you to pay the premium at the start of the case (a
"deferred premium").
If the case is lost, the insurers will pay the defendants costs,
the disbursements incurred by you after the date of the conditional
fee agreement and any interest on the disbursement loan.
In a deferred premium case you do not have to pay the insurance
premium if the case is lost. If the case is won, you pay the
insurance premium back in the first instance out of your damages.
We then ask the defendants to repay it as part of the solicitors
costs claim. In over 90% of cases we are then able to refund the
whole cost to you.
Barristers' Costs
We use barristers for advising on your case and for conducting
any trials. We may ask the barrister to enter into a conditional
fee agreement at the same "success fee" as ourselves.
How to proceed
In some cases we will enter into a conditional fee agreement
straight away. In others, we may have to carry out some
investigations including obtaining a medical report. We may ask for
a payment on account to undertake these investigations and give you
an estimate as to how much the investigations will cost in total.
After the investigations are complete, we can advise you whether we
will enter into a conditional fee agreement and inform you of the
proposed insurance premium and "success fee".
Some examples of how a conditional fee agreement may work at the
end of the case are:
- If you win £50,000 with 40% success fee. No loan for
disbursements. Deferred insurance premium.
|
|
|
| Damages |
£50,000.00 |
|
| Defendants pay FFW and barrister costs (say) |
£10,000.00 |
|
| Defendants pay FFW and barrister success fee (say) |
£4,000.00* |
|
Defendants pay your
insurance premium (say) |
£892.50 |
|
Defendants pay your
pre-paid disbursements (say) |
£2,000.00 |
|
| Your net gain |
£50,000.00 |
|
| |
|
|
- If you win £50,000 with 40% success fee and bank loan for
disbursements.
|
|
|
| Damages |
£50,000 |
|
| Defendants pay FFW and barrister costs (say) |
£10,000.00 |
|
| Defendants pay FFW and barrister success fee (say) |
£1,250.00* |
|
Defendants pay your
insurance premium (say) |
£892.50 |
|
| Defendants pay disbursements (say) |
£3,000.00 |
|
You pay interest on bank loan of (say) £2,892.50 at
12.7% x 18 months |
£275.40 |
|
| Your net gain |
£49,472.60 |
|
*In the Law Society's standard form agreement it may state that 5%
of the success fee is payable from your damages. However, in the
large majority of cases, we will not require our clients to pay
this.
- If you lose:
- your insurance pays defendants costs
- your insurance pays disbursements incurred after date of
conditional fee agreement
- your insurance may pay interest on bank loan (if relevant)
You will have paid
- the insurance premium (if not "deferred")
- investigation costs before date of Conditional Fee Agreement
(if relevant)
For further information, please contact
Peter Williams.
You can find more information about personal injury and clinical negligence by clicking on the links.
You can return to
the Personal Injury
home page by clicking on the link.