If you have had an accident and you are injured as a result, how do you decide which personal injury solicitor to choose?
Choice of personal injury solicitor
It may seem obvious, but not everyone is a qualified solicitor – we recommend that you make sure you choose a qualified personal injury solicitor to handle your claim.
Many people who deal with personal injury compensation claims have no formal qualifications to do so.
In your best interests, it is important to satisfy yourself that your claim is being dealt with by a solicitor and, preferably, one who specialises in personal injury law.
Solicitors have a recognised qualification which is only obtained after years of study and training.
Under Scots Law, the area of expertise in question is known as the Law of Delict (in the rest of the UK, the same area is known as the Law of Tort).
Additional credentials
If you are looking for help from a specialist Scottish personal injury solicitor with experience and expertise, we recommend that they should also be accredited by the Law Society of Scotland as a Specialist in Personal Injury Law.
To get that accreditation, the solicitor goes through a rigorous independent assessment every five years in which they must demonstrate competence in the field of personal injury law under Scots Law. There is no substitute for experience – and being accredited as a specialist in personal injury law proves experience.
At Moray Claims / Grigor & Young, Peter Brash is accredited by the Law Society of Scotland as a Specialist in Personal Injury Law.
Only about 70 solicitors across Scotland have the same accreditation, which shows that Moray Claims has a high level of expertise for an organisation of its size in such a rural location.
Membership of professional organisations
The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL) is a membership organisation for personal injury solicitors, covering the whole of the UK. Peter Brash and Marie Morrison are both accredited by APIL as Senior Litigators.
Grigor & Young LLP (Moray Claims is a trading name of Grigor & Young) has corporate accreditation with APIL for the firm’s Elgin branch. Relatively few solicitors’ firms in Scotland have corporate accreditation.
Our advice is that your ideal choice of personal injury solicitor is going to be a local, accredited specialist, if possible.
How much of your compensation will you get to keep?
A personal injury specialist solicitor should try to ensure that you will keep all of your compensation if you win your claim, and that you pay nothing to pursue your claim.
One of the hidden costs with some solicitors is that you will lose 20% or more of your compensation to pay costs, if your claim succeeds.
How long will it take?
We have discussed this issue and many others in articles on the Moray Claims Blog. Click here for more information about the factors which generally influence how long it will take to conclude your personal injury claim.
Can you get on with your solicitor?
It is important that you feel comfortable with your personal injury solicitor.
You have enough worries already to feel that they are adding to them. You will be dealing with them for at least several months and, in complex, high value cases, possibly several years.
Accordingly, it is important you should feel able to communicate with your solicitor as and when you need to, and that you should have confidence in their abilities – both to achieve a successful outcome and to communicate with you appropriately when that is required.
The Testimonials section of this website contains comments from previous clients, including reference to how easy they have found it to deal with Peter and/or Marie in connection with their claims.
Contact us for help
If you would like Moray Claims’ expert accident claims solicitors to help you, please call Peter Brash or Marie Morrison on 01343 544077 or use our Free Online Enquiry to contact us.
If you contact us using the Free Online Enquiry “out of hours” we will get back to you as quickly as possible – often outwith office hours.
Do not forget that it costs nothing to make an enquiry and in most cases you receive 100% of your compensation. Click to see the section on Claims Process for full details of how this works.
We are here to help you from 9am-5pm Monday to Thursday and between 9am-4pm Friday.
