Is there a limit for solicitor fees in a pi claim from an rta

da_rule

As others have also mentioned, there are caps on how much a solicitor can charge for attending court/preparing for court. But the costs get run up by other work done, for example interviewing witnesses. But these costs still must be reasonably incurred.

Crazy_Jamie

vaio wrote: »

I'm pretty sure Onan and Jamie are lawyers practising in this area so hopefully one or other will chime in soon.

vaio wrote:

My best guess is that as you have legal cover then you shouldn't have to give up any of your compensation but will get the benefit of the 10% uplift.

Speak of the devil. You'll be pleased to know that you are correct; the 10% uplift applies to all judgments given after 1st April 2013, unless a CFA was entered into before that date. In other words, the 10% uplift also applies to those cases that are not funded by CFA.

Lord Justice Jackson directly addressed this point prior to the reforms coming in, stating that the 10% increase was intended to shift balance across the board and provide increased damages for all Claimants. Indeed, it is worth remembering that plenty of Claimants are on CFAs but have not entered into any arrangement to pay a portion of their damages to the solicitor, yet they still get the 10% increase. In the circumstances it would be slightly ridiculous for Claimants not on a CFA to be denied that increase.

OnanTheBarbarian

If you have a legal protection policy, it is not an immunity to the appointed panel solicitor taking a success fee or other chunk of your winnings.

Due to the incestuous way that the industry works, many insurers are now involved with law firms and some of the terms & conditions of legal expenses policies are now changing so that there is no cover for pursuing a PI claim or an "excess" applies.

RAC kindly gave all of their breakdown members a free legal expenses policy last year, but the sting in the tail was the appointed lawyer keeping 25% of your injury compensation.

vaio

Lawyers have to eat too but it does make a mockery of the 10% uplift ostensibly to correct the previous too low levels of damages when the law firms/insurers then get to keep 25% actually leaving the injured party getting on for 20% worse off than they would have been under the previous system with the "lower" damages.

As above, insurers win, injured party loses and lawyers are somewhere in between

OnanTheBarbarian

To be fair, the lawyers are barely surviving unless they are factory firms churning over vast volumes. There is only any real profit in substantial volumes of work and paying teenagers with headsets £15k a year to follow a flow diagram.

lawyers fees on a non-contested RTA fast track case have gone from the fixed fee of £1350.00 inc 12.5% success fee to £500 + VAT + possible success fee out of the client. The trouble is that acquiring the work still costs money, so you either take a gamble on spending hundreds of thousands on an annoying TV ad campaign or you pay a "marketing fee" to a claims management company to recommend their punters to you.

The government are just a gun for hire to the insurer lobby. They'll change whatever laws the insurers ask them to.

vaio

OnanTheBarbarian wrote: »

.......The government are just a gun for hire to the insurer lobby. They'll change whatever laws the insurers ask them to.

Yep, we've just had the exemption from the new time scales in rehabilitation of offenders as another example