No win, no fee, no risk

Three cheers for the Access to Justice Action Group (AJAG) and the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL). Words you probably didn’t expect to hear on the Legal Costs Blog.

They have been loudly trumpeting their “independent research” into the impact of the Government’s proposals for ‘no win, no fee’ agreements. Press releases, tweets, etc.

They have been strangely quiet about one element of the research findings. Of those members of the public interviewed who had brought a claim under a ‘no win, no fee’ agreement, only 2% lost their case after court proceedings had been issued. A further 3% had been dropped on the solicitors’ advice. Of those cases where proceedings were issued, over 90% of claims were successful.

And we are seriously expected to believe that with these kind of success rates solicitors will not be willing to run these claims regardless of any changes to the ‘no win, no fee’ system.

I’ll be waving this research around at the next detailed assessment I attend with a success fee claimed.

More research like this please.


3 thoughts on “No win, no fee, no risk

  1. The vast majority of claims in the analysis will surely be the routine rta work? those claims are indeed the less risky and that’s why they were fixed at 12.5%

    However the larger / riskier (generally the non fast track RTA) claims are a significantly smaller proportion of the claims brought and it is those that are more likely to fail. Therefore if they only account for a small share of the claims brought then, by definition, such claims will only nominally increase the number of failed cases overall in the event that they are unsuccessful given that propensity for the volume fast track RTA claims to be (inevitably) won

  2. using Simons example, lets look at the news bites issued by Liverpool County Council and its local subsidiaries, whom proudly proclaim that they sucessfully defeat 95% of all PI claims bought against them. Automatic 100% therefore? So why was KU -v- LCC allowed @ only 50%?? Answers on a postcard please

  3. Possibly there Lordships took into account that many of the claims made against LCC are, ahem, speculative.

    On the reverse of this postcard is a picture of some pavements in Liverpool.It was either that or a Donald McGill card.

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