To be honest, I cannot speak for all law firms out there; I can only tell you about the way that we operate. But in principle, if you have instructed a lawyer to represent you on a no win, no fee basis, the idea is that you shouldn’t be charged if you lose your compensation claim.
So read on for how we can offer it, how it works, and whether there may be any catches at all.
Why do lawyers offer a no win, no fee?
We offer no win, no fee agreements so that you are not at risk of having to pay a hefty legal bill for making a claim that doesn’t succeed. Sometimes it can be very hard to know whether you have a good claim or not right at the start. Examples can be pothole claims or supermarket slipping cases. We cannot tell you whether you have a good shot of winning or not until we actually pursue it and get the other side to investigate the accident.
We of course incur legal fees in pursuing a case for you, and we can recover legal fees from the other side if we win the claim. So if we don’t win, we don’t get paid by the other side. But let’s face facts – would you make a claim if there was a risk of paying something if it didn’t win? Most people wouldn’t bother; so we offer the no win, no fee agreements to allow you to claim without the worry of incurring fees if it doesn’t win.
So how on earth would we offer to fund a claim on the basis that we might not get paid? How do we do this and how do we assess cases?
Risk Assessment
We can risk assess the prospects of your claim and make a commercial decision as to whether we think we have a good enough shot of winning the case. If we think we have a good enough chance, we might then offer to fund the claim on the basis that we will not charge you if the case loses – i.e. we offer a no win, no fee arrangement.
If the benefit of potentially getting paid outweighs the risk of not getting paid, we may be prepared to fund the claim this way. Whether we’re happy to do this is down to whether we think we have a good enough chance of winning. If you are the victim of a rear end car crash, we’ll probably offer you a no win, no fee immediately as it’s highly likely you’ll win. If you fell off a kerb and there is nothing wrong with it and you just fell because of the drop between the paving and the road, we’d probably not take the case on.
We have to be satisfied that someone has been negligence meaning there may be a case to answer for. On top of this, it doesn’t cost us too much in legal fees to set up a case and get it submitted to the opponent.
So is there a catch? Do I really pay NOTHING if the claim loses?
To repeat what I said at the start – I cannot speak for all law firms out there. Some may have fees and charges, and there may be some upfront bills to pay as well. But with us, our no win, no fee does exactly what it says on the tin. If you don’t win the claim, you pay nothing.
It is of course subject to reasonable terms and conditions. For example, if you lost the case because the claim you are making is a fraudulent claim, you won’t be covered by the principle of the no win, no fee!
