If you’re looking for help with a personal injury claim, chances are you’re still in the “acute” phase of recovery.
It’s easy to be “blinded” (or muted?) by the adverts on TV and radio into thinking that there is only one proper path to follow in pursuing your claim – in other words, to go with one of the big names (i.e. big firms) in the field.
There’s nothing wrong with that but you don’t necessarily have to engage a “big name” firm to get help from a long-experienced and accredited-specialist solicitor.
And, beyond that, the single thing that, in our experience, injured people do not do their homework on as well as they might is:
What is this all going to cost you, at the end of the day?
“No win-no fee” may feel like getting something for nothing – and you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth and all that – BUT – if you’re going to prioritise your own best interests, the cost element really matters!
Aside from the situation where your claim fails – when you would rightly expect there will be “no fee” for you to pay – the financial outcome for you in the event of success can vary dramatically.
“Success fees” in no win-no fee cases are capped at a maximum of 20% of your compensation by law in Scotland now but 20% is a significant portion of your money to lose.
The Law Society of Scotland – which is our regulating body, as solicitors – encourages “price transparency” and what we will try to do in what follows is set out our pricing structure and the various available options in increasing-cost-to-you order.
So that, hopefully, it’s clear.
1. Legal Aid
Many providers of personal injury claims services do not offer legal aid at all.
The reason given is usually that they are specialist solicitors whose high level of expertise and high cost of time means that they cannot justify faffing about with legal aid. If they take on your claim no win-no fee, they can avoid a lot of messing about with legal aid board bureaucracy and concentrate on winning your case for you.
There is a grain of truth in what they say but the main point to note is that the benefit to you under legal aid is that your solicitor is not allowed to charge anything to you if your claim succeeds.
Under legal aid, you will receive 100% of your compensation, as agreed with the opponent or as awarded by a court.
Eligibility for civil legal aid in Scotland is partly means-tested and partly merits-tested.
If you qualify for legal aid financially and you have a claim with reasonable (i.e. better than 50/50) prospects of success, we will consider taking it on under legal aid.
There is never a time when we do not have at least some claims running with legal aid as the basis of funding.
2. No win-no fee
We are a small, local “High Street” firm of solicitors (at Grigor & Young) and we generally serve clients who live in, or close to, Moray. North-East Scotland.
In those circumstances, we have a lot of local knowledge which benefits us and our clients in both assessing the merits of potential accident claims and in investigating them.
The “going rate” for Success Fees in no win-no fee cases has come to be 20%. It’s the industry standard rate, if you like.
However, for us, with local claims and clients, given the economies of scale those generate for us, we will generally restrict our Success Fee to 10%.
To take a simple example, if your no win-no fee claim settles at £10,000, you would “expect” to lose £2,000 and receive £8,000. With us, you would lose £1,000 and receive £9,000.
As we hope you can see, it pays to compare.
3. Legal Expenses Insurance
Legal Aid and No win-no fee are both types of situation where you are having to take out insurance “after the event”. Under legal aid, the “insurer” is the Scottish Legal Aid Board; under no win-no fee, it is an “after the event” (ATE) insurer.
By “Legal Expenses Insurance” here, we mean “before the event” (BTE) insurance. In other words, an insurance policy you took out before you had the accident and injury in question.
This could be a policy attached to home buildings or contents insurance. Many people have this type of ancillary insurance cover without knowing it. It’s worth checking to see if you have it.
Where BTE legal expenses insurance cover appears to be a possibility in your case, we will help you investigate whether the cover can extend to your injury situation. Sometimes a policy proves to be inadequate because of:
- the types of injury and/or accident it covers (e.g. not medical negligence); or
- the level of financial cover it provides for (the opponent’s) legal expenses (£100,000 would be sufficient but £25,000 is probably not).
Some policies will cover your own solicitor’s fees up to a maximum hourly rate but that is rare, in our experience. Usually, the policy covers adverse (i.e. the opponent’s) costs only and your solicitor will be acting for you on a no win-no fee basis in a similar way to section “2.” above.
In this scenario, it is not possible to say in advance what the exact fee-charging arrangement will be (because each BTE policy is to some extent unique) but our internal policy would remain that we seek to restrict any Success Fee to a maximum of 10% of your compensation.
4. Situations where a restriction to 10% may not apply.
There are two main possible situations:
(a) Medical Negligence cases; and
(b) High value claims (i.e. with a likely value over £100,000).
Claims based in medical (or “clinical”) negligence are, by their very nature, more complicated than “ordinary” accidents (i.e. road traffic accidents, accidents at work, pavement tripping accidents etc.).
While we can and do take on medical negligence claims under legal aid (in which case, “1.” above applies), the risks for us under no win-no fee are much greater and it is likely that a 20% Success Fee would apply.
For high value claims above £100,000 in estimated value, there may be situations where it would be in your best interests to raise a court action in the Court of Session (the highest civil court in Scotland, based only in Edinburgh) rather than the local Sheriff Court. Claims can only be raised in the Court of Session if their value is expected to exceed £100,000.
We would discuss this with you in advance and give you advice as to the pros and cons of choosing a particular court forum.
If the decision is to litigate in the Court of Session, this has practical implications which affect overall cost. We have to get assistance from Edinburgh solicitors to deal with the procedural aspects of the Edinburgh court action, at least, and, in practice, those solicitors help in many other ways too. In our experience, it means that a Success Fee of 20% will apply to the claim, with the Success Fee being split between the local agent (us) and the Edinburgh solicitor (usually equally, 10% each).
It is not possible to give set-in-stone guidelines to cover every possible scenario in advance.
If you have a potential claim, the best idea is to discuss it with us (free of charge) as soon as possible and we will then be able to give you our best assessment as to the likely fee-charging arrangement that would apply. In that way, you can make a reasonably informed choice at an early stage as to whether or not we would be an attractive proposition for handling your claim for you.
How we can help
We hope you have found this article helpful. We’re happy to answer any questions you may have. Feel free to contact us on 01343 544077 or send us a Free Online Enquiry.
All initial enquiries are at no charge and without obligation. (Here’s an explanation of what that means for initial enquiries).
