• ‘No win no fee’ is the popular term for solicitors’ conditional fee agreements. We explain how this process works in practice.

    Brachers offers a genuine no win no fee service for personal injury claims and will usually pay all the claim’s expenses for you as the case progresses.

    What is no win, no fee?

    When personal injury claims are made under a no win no fee agreement you should never have to pay a penny out of your own pocket for our legal charges, provided you follow your responsibilities under the agreement. Where a contribution for costs is required from you this will be deducted from your compensation at the end of the claim. Any contribution would be capped to guarantee you keep most of your compensation whatever happens. You, therefore, have nothing to lose in making a claim with a no win, no fee agreement but plenty to gain.

    Are there any other expenses to consider?

    There are other costs in making a personal injury claim on top of solicitors’ services – like medical reports and court fees, sometimes called “disbursements”. No win, no fee does not cover these expenses. However, insurance can cover them. You may have such insurance already (e.g. as part of your household insurance) or we can arrange no win, no fee insurance for you to cover your liability for expenses if you lose.

    How does no win, no fee insurance work?

    If we arrange no win no fee insurance for you, the premium is only payable at the end of the case, as a deduction from your compensation. The premium typically ranges from about £125 in cases settled before proceedings (as many do) to about £2,250 in larger cases settled after proceedings (£3,080 in work stress cases).

    If we need to take out no win no fee insurance, the premium for that insurance also works on a no win no fee basis. The insurance premium is just written off if you lose and deducted from your damages if you win. (In mesothelioma civil claims it’s paid by the defendant).

    What about the other side’s costs?

    Normally personal injury claimants no longer have to pay anything for the defendant’s costs if they lose. There are still certain situations where you might be responsible for defendant’s costs, for example, mesothelioma claims (where we would arrange insurance to cover this) or where the defendant made an offer to settle which you rejected but failed to beat. The court could then take away part or all of your compensation to pay the defendant’s costs. These situations should also be covered by the insurance we can arrange. The one situation that is not covered by no win no fee insurance is if a claim were found to be fundamentally dishonest.

    What happens in a no win no fee case if I win?

    No win, no fee – the success fee

    We charge a success fee in no win no fee cases to compensate us for the risks of not getting paid if claims are lost or where clients fail to beat a defendant’s offer. This fee is calculated as a percentage uplift on the basic legal charges for our time. We carefully assess this based on the risks in your case at the time we take it on. But by law the success fee is strictly limited to no more than 25% of your compensation for your injuries and past losses. Our success fee is deducted from your compensation at the end of the case (except in mesothelioma civil claims where it’s paid by the defendant).

    No win, no fee – shortfall in legal charges

    We can recover a contribution to our basic legal charges from the defendant. Our actual legal charges are usually rather less than the charges that can be recovered. This is especially the case in claims worth under £100,000, where normally only limited fixed costs are now paid by the defendant. We ask you to make a contribution to that shortfall from your compensation. But this contribution is strictly limited so that you keep most of your compensation (see below)

    Transparent solicitor charges – your capped contribution to success fee and shortfall

    At Brachers we cap our charges to you so that any charges for success fee and shortfall fee combined are limited to no more than a fixed percentage of your total compensation (provided you follow your responsibilities). This gives you the peace of mind that you will keep the majority of your damages. How this works depends on the case type and value.

    Non-mesothelioma asbestos claims, other complex claims and claims worth over £100,000

    We limit your contribution to our success fee and shortfall combined to a maximum of 25% of your total compensation plus any insurance premium.

    Other claims worth under £100,000

    We limit your contribution to our success fee and shortfall combined to a maximum of one third of your total compensation plus any insurance premium.

    In work stress claims, which tend to be more labour intensive, our cap is 40%, if fixed recoverable costs apply. However,  we anticipate these cases will often fall outside fixed costs due to their complexity. The cap would then be 25% + insurance.

    Mesothelioma civil claims

    In these cases we guarantee no charges and no insurance deducted from your damages. You keep 100% of your compensation.

    What types of personal injury claim do you deal with on a no win no fee basis?

    Most types of personal injury claim are eligible as a no win no fee basis claims, from simple fractures to serious head and psychiatric injuries, spinal injuries, work stress claims, PTSD, mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases.

    The main conditions are that we think there is a reasonable chance of your claim succeeding and (in fixed fee cases) being worth £10,000 or more (and for road traffic claims that the injury is more than soft tissue damage or worth over £25,000).

    How long will it take us to decide whether we can take your personal injury claim case on a no win, no fee?

    Every case is different and to take a case on a no win, no fee we have to be confident that the claim should succeed. Very often we are able to decide this on the same day; once we have had a chat with you about the circumstances and you’ve given us any immediately available evidence. In other cases, we might need to carry out some further investigations before we can assess your claim’s prospects, e.g. speaking to a witness, obtaining medical or employment records. This could take between a few days and several weeks. We do not charge anything to carry out this assessment.

    No win no fee – what do Brachers guarantee?

    If we take your case on a no win no fee basis, we will guarantee following, provided you follow your responsibilities:

    • We will not charge you a penny for our service if you lose
    • We will usually pay all your claims expenses as the case evolves
    • We will cap any charges if you win so you keep most of your damages
    • No charges deducted in mesothelioma civil claims
    • We will provide you with a first class service.

    No win no fee – what are the client’s responsibilities?

    In return for our first class service, we ask clients to be fair and honest with us and follow the code of conduct below.

    • Give us instructions to allow us to work for you properly until your case concludes
    • Do not ask us to work in an improper or and unreasonable way
    • Do not deliberately mislead us
    • Cooperate with us and out requests
    • Go to any necessary expert appointment or court hearing.

    How will the big cost changes from October 2023 affect no win no fee claims?

    With claims for accidents after 1 October 2023 (and work stress/ disease cases where the claim letter is sent after then) only strictly fixed costs will be recovered from the defendant if the claim’s value is no more than £100,000. (Asbestos disease and more complex claims are excluded from this).

    This change threatens the profitability of solicitors continuing to do personal injury claims on a no win no fee basis. So, it’s expected some firms will stop doing this work.

    Brachers have made the decision to continue doing this work on a no win no fee basis. We have adjusted client contributions from their compensation to ensure the work should remain profitable for us whilst still guaranteeing clients keep most of their compensation.

    Have you got a potential no win no fee claim?

    If you feel that you may have a potential claim, get in touch with our team today for an initial free consultation. You can book an appointment with our team online, fill out the online form on this webpage or call us on 01622 690691.

     

    Alternatively, find out more about what we can do for:

    Personal injury claims 

    Industrial disease and asbestos claims

    This content is correct at time of publication

    Can we help?

    Take a look at our Personal Injury page for useful information, resources, guidance, details of our team and how we may be able to help you

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