Do I Pay Legal Fees to Claim for Medical Negligence?

Medical Negligence Claims may be funded by:-

• Conditional Fee Agreements (No Win No Fee agreements)
• Before the Event Insurance (BTE)

We offer Conditional Fee Agreement (No Win No Fee Agreement) and we can offer delegated After the Event (ATE) insurance with deferred premium (payable at the end of the case) to protect you against any adverse costs.

We use the Law Society’s approved Conditional Fee Agreement

Our guarantee

We guarantee that you will not have to pay anything if we are unsuccessful in obtaining compensation for you. If this happens, we are paid nothing.

If your claim is successful, you may have to pay legal fees and expenses out of your compensation, but we guarantee that this will not exceed 25% of the compensation awarded to you and this includes the ATE insurance premium and IPT.

These guarantees only apply if you pursue your claim with us for as long as it has reasonable prospects of success, follow our professional advice and do not deliberately mislead us.

The deduction from damages

There are two elements to the deduction from damages:-

1. A “success fee” to cover us for the risk of losing your case and being paid nothing.
2. A premium for insurance to cover you against the risk of having to pay the other side’s legal fees or your expert fees and expenses.

We guarantee that the deductions will not exceed a maximum of one-quarter of your compensation.

The success fee is a percentage uplift on our normal fees to cover us for the cases we lose. It is not a percentage of your compensation.

The amount of the success fee depends how risky your case is. The riskier, the high the percentage uplift on our normal fees.

ATE Insurance cover

The insurance policy is to cover you against two risks:-

1. We will fund the experts’ fees and other expenses. If your claim is successful, then the other side will pay these expenses. If it is unsuccessful, the insurance company pays these fees for you.

2. If you reject a formal offer of settlement and then a Judge awards you the same amount or less, the normal rule is that you have to pay the other side’s costs from the date when you should have accepted the offer. However, if we advised you to reject the offer and you took our advice, then the insurance will pay the other side’s costs for you.

Remember that we guarantee that the success fee and the insurance premium combined will not exceed 25% of the compensation awarded to you.

If you have BTE insurance cover that provides cover for you for clinical/medical claims at the time of your injury, we can write to your insurers to request cover under such policy to investigate your potential claim.

How we can help

We can provide you with advice on child abuse claims and we offer a free consultation to evaluate the circumstances of your case and explain the Conditional Fee Agreement and other possible funding methods to you.

We can also provide you with information in respect of care and case support services, details of support groups, welfare advice services and other financial services.