There are many different ways a claim can be funded, depending upon your personal circumstances. These include:
- Paying for the claim yourself
- Legal expenses insurance
- Union funding
- Legal Services Commission (LSC) funding – known as Legal Aid
- Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA) – known as no win-no fee
If you intend to ask a third party to pay for your investigation, then the legal costs of pursuing your claim, must be in proportion to the likely value of the claim. Otherwise you may not obtain funding, as it may not be financially proportionate to pursue it.
We can offer you an initial free interview in person and/or by E-mail or telephone to discuss your potential claim, including how you may be able to fund it.
The Importance of Funding
It is important to have the right funding for your case:
- to ensure that your costs of investigating the claim can be paid
- because if you lose your claim you may be ordered to pay or contribute towards the costs of your opponent in addition to your own costs
Paying for the claim yourself
If you can afford it, you may choose to pay the fees for investigating your claim, and progressing it further, from your own resources.
You can start off paying for your claim, and then enter into a CFA at a later stage to protect yourself from having to pay the other side’s costs if you lose your claim.
If you carry on funding the claim yourself, without insurance, you run the risk of paying a large amount in costs if you do not proceed with a claim, or go to Trial and lose your case.
We have a number of fixed cost packages to enable you to fund the initial investigation of a claim, so you know exactly how much it will cost you.
The package and cost depends upon how much work you wish us to carry out:
Initial Basic Claim Assessment - £250.00 plus V.A.T.
- We meet you to discuss your claim, you pay to obtain copies of your medical records and we provide you with our preliminary opinion, on the basis of the records alone, as to whether or not to continue investigating your claim.
Full Claim Assessment - £2,000.00 plus V.A.T.
- We meet you to discuss your claim, you pay to obtain copies of your medical records, we study those records and then instruct 1 independent medical expert to prepare a report upon your claim.
Complete Claim Assessment £2,500.00 plus V.A.T.
- We meet you to discuss your claim, we pay the fees to obtain copies of your medical records, we study those records and then instruct 1 independent medical expert to prepare a report upon your claim.
If more than 1 expert report is required for a complex potential claim, we charge a further £200.00 plus V.A.T. for our costs plus the actual fees of that second expert for providing the report.
Legal Expenses Insurance
Many people have the benefit of ‘Before the Event’ (BTE) legal expenses insurance under their car, household or other insurance policy and do not realise it.
Check your insurance policies for the time at which the treatment took place.
If you do have BTE legal expenses insurance cover, contact a solicitor. You will need to check that the insurance covers clinical negligence claims. However, if you contact the insurance company before you contact a solicitor, you may be referred to a ‘panel’ solicitor by the insurance company who may not be the person you would want to choose.
You have a right to instruct a solicitor of your choice to handle your claim.
It is important to ensure that you get the best possible advice, from a solicitor who specialises in clinical negligence claims.
Because we have a specialist clinical negligence department, we enjoy approval from several legal expenses insurers.
Union Funding
If you are a member of a Union, contact your local representative to see if they will provide funding support for your claim.
If the Union will fund your claim, you will probably be referred to a firm of panel solicitors by them unless you are able to negotiate with them to instruct your own choice of solicitor.
LSC Funding
In order to get ‘legal aid’ from the Legal Services Commission (LSC) you must qualify for funding in terms of (a) the strength of your case (the merits test), and (b) your financial circumstances (eligibility test).
If you receive certain State benefits, such as income support or job seeker’s allowance, you automatically qualify financially for funding. You still have to show that your case has good chances of being successful.
If you receive other State benefits or have a low income, so that you qualify for tax credits, you may be eligible for funding but you will have to pay a contribution towards your legal costs from your income or savings before you will be granted ‘legal aid’.
If you are bringing a case on behalf of someone else, e.g. a child, it is their financial circumstances which are taken into account.
We can offer public funding, because we hold a Specialist Quality Mark from the Legal Services Commission in the category of clinical negligence.
The Commission website www.legalservices.gov.uk contains full details of their Funding Code, which sets out the rules that cover ‘legal aid’ in clinical negligence cases.
CFA/No Win-No Fee
You can enter into an agreement with your solicitor that if you pursue your claim and lose you will not pay their fees.
If you pursue the claim and win, your solicitor will receive their usual fees plus a success fee, calculated as a percentage of the overall costs. These legal costs should be paid by the other side, and can be as much as double the normal rate.
The success fee is calculated by reference to the particular facts and risks of your claim.
You will normally be asked to take out an ‘After the Event’ (ATE) insurance policy for the CFA. In the event that you lose your claim, the insurance policy will pay the expenses of your claim such as court or experts’ fees (but not your solicitor’s costs) and will also pay the other side’s costs. As above, if you lose a claim, you may be ordered to pay the other side’s costs. You must therefore ensure that the amount of cover is sufficient to cover all of the costs right up to, and including, Trial.
If you win your claim, in addition to the costs of your claim which will be paid for by the other side, the premium(s) of your insurance policy will also be reclaimed.
Many insurance policies do not require payment of the premium until the end of the case. The premium may also be paid out of the proceeds of the insurance policy if you lose your claim. This is called a deferred premium. This varies with each insurance policy.
You can also enter into a loan agreement to pay the expenses of your claim as it progresses, such as expert fees. This is known as a ‘disbursement funding scheme’. You will have to pay interest on the loan, even if you win your case, out of your damages.
One of our solicitors can discuss this funding option with you in more detail.
We can discuss all these funding options with you on a free, no-obligation basis.
