Your solicitor’s aim is to maximise the amount of compensation you receive for your injuries and other losses. The “top line” value of your claim needs to be as high as possible, but that’s not all. You also want to try to reduce the amount you will lose in having to pay legal fees from your compensation. For most people who become a personal injury client of Moray Claims / Grigor & Young, you pay nothing to us out of your compensation. In other words, you receive your damages in full, without any deduction. In a minority of cases, though, a deduction does apply. So , how much does a personal injury claim cost? And how can you minimise what you will have to pay out of your damages? As we will see, it can mean the difference between receiving 100% of your compensation and only 80% - and the reduction has nothing to do with contributory negligence. Putting it another way, how would you feel if your claim settled at £75,000 and you only received £60,000 when, Continue Reading
Funding a personal injury claim
This can be a confusing subject and the funding landscape for personal injury claims is constantly shifting.
These articles deal with a range of topics in relation to funding personal injury claims, including:
- No win-no fee
- Legal aid
- Legal expenses insurance, generally
- Before the Event (BTE) insurance,
- After the Event (ATE) insurance, and
- Qualified One-way Cost-Shifting (QOCS)
How Your Solicitor Gets Paid No Win-No Fee in Scotland
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Some of the content of this article has been superceded. The Voluntary Pre-action Protocol referred to is now a Compulsory Protocol (from November 2016) but we have left this article in place because it provides a useful reference point back to the previous system for comparision purposes]. If your solicitor takes on your personal injury claim no win – no fee then it means you will have nothing to pay if the claim does not succeed. But how does the solicitor get paid if the claim is successful and you receive compensation for your injuries and other losses? Your solicitor will have a written agreement with you about how fees are to be calculated if you win your case. This is called a Speculative Fee Agreement. Often, it will provide for charges at an hourly rate and it may even cover what is known as a “success fee”. This is an additional percentage that can be charged to the hourly rate in certain circumstances – usually if the claim was higher risk or more Continue Reading
Legal Aid for Personal Injury Claims in Scotland
These days, much of the focus is on “no win – no fee” arrangements but, in Scotland, civil legal aid is still available for personal injury claims. At Moray Claims / Grigor & Young about 50% of our personal injury caseload is covered by some form of legal aid. The First Stage of Your Claim – Advice & Assistance The initial stages of a claim can be covered by legal advice and assistance, a form of legal aid which allows work to be done in investigating the claim, including obtaining medical evidence, negotiating with the opponent and settling the claim if possible. The Scottish Legal Aid Board’s website has a calculator which allows you to check your likely eligibility for legal advice and assistance. Some people qualify fully, some not at all and, in the middle, some qualify but with the need to pay a financial contribution. Despite this, at Moray Claims / Grigor & Young, we never require payment of any advice and assistance contribution to be made. Your Continue Reading
Legal Expenses Insurance: one method of funding your personal injury claim
If you have had an accident and been injured, you may have insurance cover for the cost of instructing a solicitor that you didn't even know you had. Most of us hold some form of insurance - household (buildings or contents), medical, car, holiday - the list is endless. Many such policies have Legal Expenses Insurance (LEI) as an add-on, often buried in the small print. If you need to make a personal injury claim following an accident, LEI is one way of funding your claim. Others are "no win - no fee" and, in Scotland, Legal Aid. There can also be similar cover through bank accounts, credit cards and bank / organisation memberships. Some of us at Moray Claims / Grigor & Young are members of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL) and they have produced a helpful downloadable pamphlet which includes discussion about these issues. How we can help We can help you determine whether this type of funding - or any of the others - would be available to help you Continue Reading