Solicitor wants 25% of my personal injury compensation

Randy_Watson

I was involved a car accident earlier this year and broke my leg. I was off work for eight weeks so was advised to make a personal injury claim.

I contacted a solicitor last week hoping for a 'no win, no fee' arrangement but was told I would have to give them 25% of my compensation if the claim was successful.

They said it was to do with the new laws and can't recover costs from the other persons insurance company.

Has this happened to anyone else recently?

Are there solicitors out there who will still take cases on a 'no win, no fee' basis? or is the 25% deduction commonplace now?

huckster

No experience of this, but I think there have been some changes in law.

Why don't you make a few phone calls to see if other personal injury Solicitors are doing similar and post back here, to inform others.

little_miss_muppet_face

All firms will take a cut if you win, unsure of the %, your one is saying they will take a cut if successful, so must be no win no fee.

BertTheRaccoon

There were new reforms which were brought in with effect from 1st April this year that no longer allow a solicitor to recover the "success fee" from the insurer of the other party.

These fees are now recovered from the client. This is industry standard now. All you could do is see if the solicitor will haggle on the success fee.

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A law firm who does not charge you a success fee under their no win- no fee agreement would basically be doing all the work involved in your claim for a fixed fee of £500 they will be paid by the insurer - if it not economic for a solicitor to run a case like yours for only £500 without the lawyer quickly going out of business.

So yes, from now on 25% deduction from a compo claim is the norm.

You have the Tory government and their insurer chums to thank for that.

InsideInsurance

Randy_Watson wrote: »

Has this happened to anyone else recently?

Are there solicitors out there who will still take cases on a 'no win, no fee' basis? or is the 25% deduction commonplace now?

As above, the laws changed meaning solicitors have a much lower fee that they can earn from the third party insurers and so most are now wanting to take some of your damages to cover some of their lost earnings.

Of cause if you have Legal Expenses/ Uninsured Loss Recovery on your motor insurance (or home insurance if you were a pedestrian/ cyclist at the time) then this would be covered by that policy

olly300

BertTheRaccoon wrote: »

So yes, from now on 25% deduction from a compo claim is the norm.

You have the Tory government and their insurer chums to thank for that.

It's all the whiplash claims that have helped caused the problem.

Randy_Watson

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Of cause if you have Legal Expenses/ Uninsured Loss Recovery on your motor insurance (or home insurance if you were a pedestrian/ cyclist at the time) then this would be covered by that policy

If I had legal expenses insurance on my motor insurance would that prevent the deductions from compensation? I thought that would just cover the legal costs of a solicitor actually taking my case on.

I've tried phoning a few different solicitors and it seems the 25% deduction is across the board.

Seems a bit rubbish to me.

tasticz

If you have legal cover then you can claim they usually offer 100% compensation.

Also the solicitors offering 25% you could always offer them say 10% + vat or whatever you are happy with (make sure this is put on the documents not just phone) phone coupl of the ones from tv advertisement I am sure one of them will happily take on your case as they work on volumes rather then individual cases.

InsideInsurance

Randy_Watson wrote: »

If I had legal expenses insurance on my motor insurance would that prevent the deductions from compensation? I thought that would just cover the legal costs of a solicitor actually taking my case on.

No, it covers the solicitors costs and so you receive 100% of the compensation. Many insurers will try and get you to use the solicitors on their panel rather than one of your own choice but normally this can be argued against as long as your solicitors are willing to abide by the terms of your policy.

Voyager2002

Of course, the fact that a solicitor is willing to take your case on a "contingency" basis means you have a pretty good chance of winning. So it might make sense to approach solicitors asking to pay in the usual way.

Of course, if you have insurance to cover legal expenses then that is what you should do anyway.

BertTheRaccoon

If you have legal expenses insurance then look to use the solicitors they will appoint so that you do get to keep 100% of your compensation.

But if you have no legal cover then you are going to be hard pressed to find a solicitor who will run a claim like this for £500 costs as there is a fair bit of work involved. I would avoid someone who will do it without taking a cut from you as frankly that will just encourage short cuts in my opinion.

Pay peanuts and you'll get monkeys