Solicitor wants 25% of my personal injury compensation

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  • dacouch
    dacouch Posts: 21,637 Forumite
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    Randy_Watson wrote: »
    Solicitor wants 25% of my personal injury compensation

    Excellent !!!!!! star name
  • Parking_Trouble
    Parking_Trouble Posts: 759 Forumite
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    The £500 limit puts the kibosh on referral fees does it not?

    Admiral made £18.6m from referral fees in 2012 - very lucrative and all passed onto the punters of course.

    So now they are starting a venture with law firm - keep it in the family eh?

    http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/law-firm-abs-ventures-insurer-admiral
    Mr Straw described whiplash as "not so much an injury, more a profitable invention of the human imagination—undiagnosable except by third-rate doctors in the pay of the claims management companies or personal injury lawyers"

  • Crazy_Jamie
    Crazy_Jamie Posts: 2,246 Forumite
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    It is by no means the case that all solicitors firms will now take 25% of your compensation as a success fee. There are still plenty out there who won't take any of your compensation. Though you should remember that in cases litigated after 1st April 2013 Judges will now be increasing awards for general damages (which related to your injury) by 10%, which is designed to offset the fact that many claims will now be brought on a contingency basis. So in practical terms you're only losing 15% by entering into a 25% contingency fee, and not losing anything if you enter into an agreement for 10% or less.
    olly300 wrote: »
    It's all the whiplash claims that have helped caused the problem.
    That is a drastic over simplification of the issues, which exist on both sides of the fence. Not that it is particularly worth arguing about that now given that the changes are already here.
    "MIND IF I USE YOUR PHONE? IF WORD GETS OUT THAT
    I'M MISSING FIVE HUNDRED GIRLS WILL KILL THEMSELVES."
  • Parking_Trouble
    Parking_Trouble Posts: 759 Forumite
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    I am not sure why £500 isn't lucrative enough for the majority of whiplash claims. Insurers fall over themselves to make an early payment so the only dispute is how much the settlement will be.

    You may think a solicitor does your house conveyancing but it is normally an "conveyancer" or clerk that does the work.

    Likewise the ambulance chasers often use ex-claims handlers from insurance companies.

    If the ambulance chasers charged true time and materials they would still make a decent profit out of £500.

    The gravy train has been using a red wine jus for too long when all they deserve is Bisto.

    Just to be clear there are genuine injury cases that need specialist attention and may end up in court. I am just picking on the whiplash epidemic in this country where compo is pretty much forced on people when it is not needed or deserved.
    Mr Straw described whiplash as "not so much an injury, more a profitable invention of the human imagination—undiagnosable except by third-rate doctors in the pay of the claims management companies or personal injury lawyers"

  • weejonnie
    weejonnie Posts: 330 Forumite
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    Since legal expenses can be had for about £20.00 (either on motor or household (covering different eventualities)) maybe more people will take it once they realise the potential losses that may now occur. Some organisations also offer legal expenses protection as part of their membership benefits.

    Hopefully those companies that until now had a cosy relationship with solicitors (selling 'legal expenses' but then referring all cases to them) will either be forced out of business or offer a properly underwritten policy.

    Have yet to see if legal expenses insurance premiums will go up.
  • Randy_Watson
    Randy_Watson Posts: 6 Forumite
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    It is interesting that there is not much publicity about this. Well, I don't suppose lawyers are going to be quick to advertise that you wont get 100 per cent of the compensation anymore.

    Govt is right to tackle bogus whiplash claims. People aren't going to pay up front for a solicitor to take on their case unless it's genuine - you would think.

    The rule changes only came in recently so it's too early to tell what impact it will have on the general public.
  • Randy_Watson
    Randy_Watson Posts: 6 Forumite
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    weejonnie wrote: »
    Since legal expenses can be had for about £20.00 (either on motor or household (covering different eventualities)) maybe more people will take it once they realise the potential losses that may now occur.

    I wonder how many people even understand what legal expenses insurance is? I reckon most people just see it as an 'add-on' which they don't need.

    I like most people, just try and get my insurance for as cheap as possible so apologies to all for moaning about a lack of cover!
  • InsideInsurance
    InsideInsurance Posts: 22,460 Forumite
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    Randy_Watson wrote: »
    I wonder how many people even understand what legal expenses insurance is? I reckon most people just see it as an 'add-on' which they don't need.

    Before the days of aggregators Legal Expenses used to be on around 90-95% of Motor policies even when it was an optional extra.

    It has always sold well because whilst people dont really understand it they hear they get £100,000 of cover for only £20 so think its a good buy.

    Since the aggregators and price becoming the god emperor (and not just king) more insurers quote without including LE to try and cut every penny they can to get to the top of the list.

    I dont know how the numbers have moved but I imagine penetration is still very high.
  • BertTheRaccoon
    BertTheRaccoon Posts: 646 Forumite
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    weejonnie wrote: »
    Since legal expenses can be had for about £20.00 (either on motor or household (covering different eventualities)) maybe more people will take it once they realise the potential losses that may now occur. Some organisations also offer legal expenses protection as part of their membership benefits.

    Hopefully those companies that until now had a cosy relationship with solicitors (selling 'legal expenses' but then referring all cases to them) will either be forced out of business or offer a properly underwritten policy.

    Have yet to see if legal expenses insurance premiums will go up.

    The intermidiaries and insurers selling legal cover who had the "cosy relationships" with solicitors are no longer able to sell on the cases for a referral fee, so instead the insurers and brokers have bought law firms, so rather than rely on referral fees, they just share profits.

    So no reduction in the appetite to shove customers to a lawyer will arise the the claim volume will not reduce. All this has done is box the independent law firm out the picture, who now instead of buying leads for claims from insurers or accident management companies, they have to market themslevs direct to the public - so expect a rise in the number of TV, radio & other media adverts.

    Secondly - legal expenses "insurance" will continue to be the sham it always has been. By this I mean that if a punter who has such a policy wants to chose his own solicitor, he will be told they will not indemnify a non-panel solicitor. Why is this? Well it is because the panel solicitor will have agreed never to claim for any fees from the legal expenses insurer when the claim fails, where as an independent solicitor will want to claim back the hundreds if not thousands of pounds he may have wasted on a client's case that then fails.

    Thirdly - legal expenses insurance - I would expect to see a change to policy terms & conditions appear soon. The reason why? Well, there is strong news that the personal injury small claims limit will rise from £1000 to £5000 soon. The effect of this is that no longer would a solicitor on a successful claim be able to see any costs from the losing party. So if a client has a legal expenses policy, the solicitor would then go back to the LEI and say pay my costs.

    If this happens, legal expesnes insurers will soon have to for the first time in their champertous existence have to actually pay out some legal fees. They won't like that and as a result one of 2 things will happe.

    1- The cost of these policies will rise - result = nobody will buy them

    2- The terms & conditions will change so that PI claims are excluded from the cover and that would mean that lawyers act on a contingency fee basis where you lose a chunk of your damages and no legal costs get paid by the legal expenses policy you have.

    Rumour around the camp fire is that the decision to bring in the new £5k limit for PI cases has been delayed so the legal expenses insurers have time to get their policy wordings changed and avoid exposure to any legal costs.

    To anyone on here, don't believe all the sensationalised hype the Daily Mail spout.
  • BertTheRaccoon
    BertTheRaccoon Posts: 646 Forumite
    edited 10 June 2013 at 10:20AM
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    InsideInsurance wrote: »
    Before the days of aggregators Legal Expenses used to be on around 90-95% of Motor policies even when it was an optional extra.

    It has always sold well because whilst people dont really understand it they hear they get £100,000 of cover for only £20 so think its a good buy.

    Since the aggregators and price becoming the god emperor (and not just king) more insurers quote without including LE to try and cut every penny they can to get to the top of the list.

    I dont know how the numbers have moved but I imagine penetration is still very high.

    This is copied & pasted from Insurance Post


    Brokers selling add-ons contacted by FCA as regulator begins crackdown

    • [URL="javascript:void(0);"]inShare[/URL]0

    Signs the Financial Conduct Authority’s scrutiny of insurance add-ons is underway have been witnessed by brokers that have already been contacted by the regulator.
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