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If making a common law claim through a solicitor, generally if you 'win', i.e. if an agreement is made to settle the claim, the claimant has a right to recover their reasonable legal costs from the defendant. It also means that if you 'lose', you could be liable for the insurer's costs in defending the claim. It's important to understand all of the ins and outs of any agreement that a solicitor want you to sign up to when they take on the claim - the 'Conditional Fee Agreement'.
Recoverable costs in personal injury claims have decreased in a few ways following reforms introduced in 2013. Some firms now operate on a 'damages based agreement' basis to make up for this shortfall, whereby you enter in to an agreement to forgoe a certain percentage of your damages settlement. In theory, this is meant to incentivise the claimant's solicitors to recover as much in damages as possible, but in practice this isn't always the case when dealing with high-frequency / (relatively) low loss claims. In any event, they should be trying to maximise damages anyway.
Harrington-
Thanks for this Harrington. Is it right now that it is not possible to claim the entirety of the legal costs from the defendant? And if not would it be possible for there to be quite some shortfall that the claimant would be liable for?
I've also just got in touch with c-ams.co.uk/> to ask for a callback.
This is some really great feedback, thanks everyone very much.
JamesNorthYorkshire
Hey now worries mentioning the helmet thing, we want to know stuff like that.
The solicitor my Mum spoke to yesterday said their fee would be a quarter of the settlement, is that fair enough?
The solicitor my Mum spoke to on Tuesday when my Mum asked about his fee said "Oh don't worry about the fee that comes out of the other guys insurance". But my response to that (I wasn't there at the time I just mean when my Mum told me what he'd said) was what does that mean "it comes out of the guys insurance" cos surely any settlement comes out of the other guys insurance, no?
Thanks so much for the comments so far its all helping begin to understand the process a bit and any further input will be very welcome.