Help with Legal Fees

Karfy

hi there,

I'm in receipt of long term incapacity benefit and DLA and wondering if anyone knows if you are entitled to some help with legal costs or are your legal fees paid for if you are disabled? I ate some chicken in a cafe last november and as a result became really ill with campylobactor infection, i'm still suffering the effects now with post infective irritable bowel syndrome. I've approached a solicitor who thinks I have a case for a compensation claim and has asked me to find out if any legal fees are covered in my insurance policies which they are not but wondering if there are any other avenues to explore with help in this way. He said he can work on a no win no fee basis but if I do win then they will need to be paid, apparently all or part of their fee can be claimed back from the defendant but it would be better if legal fees were covered somehow.

Any help would be great, thanks. Katharine

somebody_else

My advice would be to contact the Legal Services Commision,

http://www.legalservices.gov.uk/civil.asp

Their phone number is on the page on this link. As you're on IB and DLA you're probably covered for legal assistance, but you'd need to ask them if they'd cover your specific case.

I would advise against no win no fee - it's very likely if you won your case, most of the compensation (if awarded) would be swallowed up in legal fees.

kazzah

I believe that Incapacity benefit would count as income for the purposes of calculating your entitlement to legal services funding ( legal aid)
I think that most conditional fee arrangements ( no win no fee) these days are required to give you 100% of the compensation won and make a separate claim for their expenses to be re-imbursed
It may be possible to purchase an insurance indemity poicy to cover the cost of your legal fees in relation to a conditional fee arrangement - so that you can gurantee the compensation comes to you.
Did you pay for the meal with a credit card by any chance? - if so, it might be worth seeing if their insurance company would cover leage fees?