One of the main concerns that people have when seeking legal advice is about the cost involved. Legal Aid is only available for very limited cases of medical negligence and therefore cases need to be funded in other ways. Fortunately in Personal Injury claims this does not mean you will have to pay by the hour or even pay anything up front. This is a brief summary of the main ways to fund a claim but at Hansells we are happy to discuss the options before committing to any form of funding.
Legal Expense Insurance
Many people pay extra to have legal expense insurance on their car and home insurance. It is always advisable to check your policies as some insurers include it for free and you may not be aware you have it. The types of policy that may have legal expenses insurance are:
- Household contents insurance documents
- Household buildings insurance documents
- Motor insurance documents
- Any other insurance documents which you or other members of your household have which may include any legal expense cover. (This may include credit cards.)
If you do have legal expense insurers then the insurance company may try and insist you use their panel solicitors. You do not necessarily have to do this and we have worked with a number of insurers who have allowed us to represent clients under the legal expense policy.
We are always happy to contact insurers to discuss handling the claim for you and to fill in the claim forms that will need completing before they will make a decision on whether they will fund the claim. All we need is the name, address and policy number of the insurers and we will then contact them.
Conditional Fee Agreements (CFA)
This sort of agreement is also known as a ‘No Win, No Fee’ agreement. If your claim is funded by way of a CFA you do not pay any costs if your claim is unsuccessful (unless your claim is shown to be dishonest or fraudulent) but if your claim is successful you agree to pay a “success fee” to Hansells which can be anything up to 25% of your compensation.
We recommend taking out insurance to protect against any adverse cost orders and to cover expenses of the claim such as the cost of obtaining a medical report. The premium for this policy is again only payable in the event of a successful claim and premiums start at £75.
We will discuss all the terms of the agreement and insurance before you sign the agreement so you can ensure you are happy with everything before you proceed.
Union Membership
If you belong to a Union they may provide cover for Legal Expenses. If you proceed through union membership they will generally require you to use their solicitors, but we are always happy to discuss this and look at the options available if you wish to use our services.
Damage-Based Agreements (DBA)
Although these are available to fund personal injury claims not many solicitors offer such agreements in personal injury claims. DBA’s are not offered by Hansells to pursue a personal injury claim.
This is just a brief summary of the funding of Personal Injury Claims. If you have been injured in any sort of accident please contact our Personal Injury team for a no obligation chat about whether it is possible to claim and if so the best way to fund the claim.
