No Win No Fee

We can work for you on a no win, no fee basis, which means that if you lose, we don't get paid and you don't pay anything, and If you win, your compensation and our legal fee will be claimed from the Defendant's insurance company. In other words you are able to make a claim for a personal injury without you having to take any risk.

We hear a lot about no win no fee compensation in the media these days.  This is not simply because lawyers have become more competitive in the way they sell their services, although this is certainly true.  The main reason for the change is that the law itself changed.  Before the mid 1990’s “no win no fee” agreements were not possible.  This meant that unless they were eligible for legal aid, clients had to risk having to pay a hefty fee should they lose the case.  So even if they had a strong claim, many people were understandably put off from pursuing their claim through the courts because of the financial risk involved. 

Until August 1995 to claim compensation for an injury a person would either have to qualify for legal aid or pay privately. Legal aid could be difficult to obtain due to the fact that it was means tested.  In other words, the injured person could be prevented from qualifying because of having too much income or too much in savings or capital assets. Therefore a lot of people did not qualify for legal aid.

If a person could not qualify for legal aid, then the only other way of bringing a claim was to do it privately which meant that they would not only be responsible for their own lawyer’s fee but also the opponent’s legal fee in the event of losing the claim, which would expose the injured person to a significant financial risk.

This was clearly an unsatisfactory state of affairs, since there were people with valid claims who simply could not afford to instruct a lawyer to pursue a legal claim for compensation.  These people then suffered real hardship and loss in their lives through the combination of their initial injury and its consequences and a lack of suitable financial compensation for loss of earnings and the cost of rehabilitation, treatment, care and other expenses.

That all changed in August 1995 with the introduction of “no win no fee” (also called conditional fee), which meant that people could now instruct lawyers on the basis that the lawyers would only be paid a fee if the case was successful, and therefore they no longer had to take the risk. The lawyers would take the risk instead.  Obviously this was an improvement on the previous legal framework.  People who have suffered an injury are no longer prevented from making a claim because they cannot afford to risk having to pay a fee.

This has led to the creation of a market in legal services.  Lawyers now have to compete with each other much more in this market.  This is the reason for the great increase in the advertising of legal services that has occurred in recent years.  Many people see this as a negative development and some solicitors have certainly fallen into the trap of overselling themselves.  It must be remembered that this has to be balanced against the very positive consequence that nobody has to lose out on a valid claim for compensation because they cannot afford to mount a legal claim.

For some years after 1995 lawyers were entitled to charge what is called a success fee, which was an additional amount on top of the normal fee to reflect the fact that they took the risk. This has now all changed and the additional fee paid to the lawyer if the case is successful is now paid by the opponent, not you.

Therefore if you are successful in your case you will receive your compensation and the legal costs will be claimed against the defendant. If you are unsuccessful then you can walk away without it costing you anything at all.

You really do not have any risk. The risk is taken by us, and not by you. When we say we will act for you on a no win no fee no risk basis we mean just that - this gives you a risk free means of pursuing a legal claim.