No Win No Fee Claims Explained

What Is A No Win No Fee agreement?

No win no fee is an arrangement made with your solicitor when you make a legal claim for compensation. This kind of arrangement can remove a lot of the worry and expense from making a claim.

As these agreements are unfamiliar to most people, there are often misconceptions about what exactly no win no fee means. But, no win no fee agreements are there to help you make a claim while taking away some of the risk for you.

How Do No Win No Fee Solicitors Work?

There are several different types of ‘no win no fee’ agreements. The most common one is a Conditional Fee Agreement, or CFA. It is this agreement which sets out how the solicitor is paid if the case is successful. And, it sets out how things will work if the claim is unsuccessful.

In Successful Cases

In a successful case, we have a right to payment for the work we have done and your opponent will usually be ordered to pay your legal costs. We may also be entitled to a success fee.

The success fee is something which helps us, as solicitors, to recoup our losses on those claims which are unsuccessful. Without the success fee, we would not be able to make the no win no fee system work.

It is important to take on board that the success fee is not designed to pay our costs incurred on your case. Rather, the intention is to cover our losses on other claims.

People often get confused about this and think that the success fee is there just to pay our costs. Rather, your success fee allows us to help other people and run claims with less risk to them, as well as other claim’s success fee’s allowing us to run your claim with less risk to you.

The success fee will usually be a percentage of the damages, or compensation. This percentage will have been agreed with you at the start of the case. We will not charge you more than the percentage we agreed in your no win no fee agreement.

In Unsuccessful Cases

But what happens about our costs if your claim isn’t successful? Generally speaking, if the claim fails, you would NOT have to pay our costs.

But that’s not to say that you have no responsibilities. The most important person in proving your claim is you, so you have a duty to help us progress the claim as best you can. Your duties are set out in the no win no fee agreement in more detail. But, in essence, if you cancel the claim, switch solicitors, or become unreachable for any reason, then that would be a breach of the agreement.

Also, your instructions about the claim must be honestly given and must not be misleading. If you commit a serious breach of the agreement, then we may have the right to ask you to pay or contribute to our fees. A serious breach would be one which left us unable to progress the claim to a successful conclusion.

So, if your case isn’t successful, you generally wouldn’t have to pay our costs, unless you were in breach of our agreement.

Disbursements

Disbursements are payments to other people who help us win your case. They could be doctors, barristers, court fees, or something else. Of course, these people are not working on a no win no fee deal, so they will expect to be paid. We have a few ways to assist with this.

In simple and straightforward cases, we will pay for these as they arise. And, we will indemnify you against having to pay these charges. That is, if that our agreement is adhered to and subject to any limitations in our agreement.

If required, we can assist by obtaining insurance to protect you. So, the insurance will pay out if the case is lost.

Plus, in some cases, we can get loans to pay for complex or expensive disbursements. Usually that loan will be paid off on successful conclusion of the claim. Or, in the event of a failed claim, the insurance company will pay the loan. So, this type of funding can work very well.

Why Do We Offer No Win, No Fee?

We believe that you shouldn’t face any unnecessary risk for making a good claim against someone who has caused you loss and harm. No win no fee is the best way of taking that risk away from you.

Some details may vary on a case-by-case basis. There are also other types of no win no fee deals. For example, Contingency Fee Agreements and Damages Based [‘DBA’] Agreements. But this article sets out the gist of how CFA Agreements is designed to work.

It is always recommended that you read through your agreements in detail. As well as this, your solicitor will always explain the agreement before signing it. They should be happy to answer any specific queries you may have.

We can run most types of legal claim on a no win no fee basis. So, if you have a claim you’d like to make, get in touch to find out exactly how we can help you.