No win, no fee....

It means what is says. If your lawyer represents you under a proper no win no fee agreement (also called a conditonal fee agreement) you should not have to pay your lawyer anything if your claim is unsuccessful.

Why would a lawyer be prepared to do work and risk no getting paid? Well there are a number of reasons:-

(i) The lawyer would want to be satisfied that there was a reasonable prospect of succeeding with your claim and the claim was not fanciful or doomed to failure from the outset.

(ii) The vast majority of injury claims taken on by lawyers are successful – it is reasonably easy to pick a straightforward winning claim, the art of our work is to select the wining cases where the liability issues are not so clear cut.

(iii) Your lawyer will be entitled to recover a "bonus" or success fee (currently paid for by the Defendant insurer). This is meant to compensate the lawyer for running a case where there is a risk of losing and not getting paid. This success fee is capped in the majority of cases such as road traffic accidents (12.5% of basic costs) where the liability issues and risks of litigation are meant to be more straightforward and easier to call or an accident at work (25% of basic costs) where usually the liability issues are not so clear cut.

In other cases, for example slipping and tripping accidents, involving claims against the local highway authority the Claimant’s solicitors can set there own success fee in accordance with the perceived risk of litigation although if the Defendant is required to pay the Claimant’s costs in due course the Defendant is entitled to challenge the level of the success fee.

In the event that a claim ends up at trial (when clearly there is going to be highly contested issues) then the success fee will normally increase to 100% of the Claimant’s basic costs i.e. the lawyer can double their fee if they succeed at a final hearing. This sounds all very well but very few cases end up at trial and if they do then these are claims where there is a major dispute on the issues. Therefore while a Claimant’s lawyer might recover substantial costs if the claim is successful at trial the lawyer will also receive nothing by way of costs if the claim fails, it is therefore usually high risk at this stage.

There is currently a proposal that the Government is looking at introducing that the success fee payable in the event of a successful claim should no longer be paid for by the Defendant insurer but by the Claimant out of damages recovered. The proposal protects the Claimant in terms of the level of the success fee by capping the success fee at a maximum of 25% of the Claimant’s compensation, essentially this would guarantee a Claimant recovered 75% of the damages that were recovered on his behalf. On the basis that the Claimant is not at risk and can bring a claim at the moment without any thought of contributing to the costs of a claim this is probably a reasonable proposal. If this proposal is introduced then it is likely that market forces will drive down the level of success fees and Claimant’s will shop around to obtain the best deal from a Claimant personal injury lawyer.