| How Much Is My Personal Injury Solicitor
Worth? |
How
Much Is My Personal Injury Solicitor Worth?
By: Matrix Jones
The thought that comes to most peoples’ minds after suffering
a
personal injury is that I must get a solicitor. Or the
suggestion may
come
from your partner or a friend wishing you well and to see that you
receive
compensation for your injuries. Everyone is emotionally charged and
wishing for some sort of ‘justice’ from the
situation. This is
particularly true in the case of a motor accident where your
pride and
joy is all
smashed to smitherine. Also you are not looking too good yourself
having felt the impact through your whole body and suffered nasty
injuries
from the restraining seatbelt and cuts and bruises to your face and
burn injuries from the exploding airbag.
Now everyone is out to get the other motorist involved in the accident
and its going to cost him for the accident
was his fault. But what if
the accident
was not a motor accident but was instead an accident at
work. Let us assume that you work in an office and on the way back to
your
desk from the coffee machine you tripped over a piece of loose carpet
or electric cables and smashed you face against a table as you fell.
You also sustained other injuries and burnt yourself with the coffee you
were carrying.
What would be your attitude then about seeking redress against your
employers where you have been working now for the past four years and is
quite happy with your job? You are on a good salary with perks and your
prospects for further progression are quite good. Also you get on very
well with your colleagues a number of whom are close friends with whom
you socialise outside of work.
In the first scenario you have no hesitation whatsoever in seeking to
obtain justice from the alleged negligent motorist. However, you have
mixed emotions when it comes to claiming against your employer. But you
have to make a decision as the ‘limitation’ clock
starts to tick
straight away under which you have three years in which to claim for
personal
injury The Law Reform Limitation Act (1980) failing which your claim
becomes statute barred, in other words out of time.
There is no law that says you need to instruct a solicitor to pursue
your claim for personal injuries. That is a decision which you take
freely but usually because most people have no idea what to do going
forwards with their personal injury claim. They therefore rush to their
nearest solicitor
office having taken bad advice from friends as to the
suitability of their local solicitor
to handle their personal injury
claim.
They have no idea that solicitors
specialise in different fields of
law, eg, employment, family, criminal, personal injury etc.
Your local law firm may
specialise in personal injury claims but being
a small firm of solicitors
they have a limited number of qualified
solicitors
on their books and so they multitask meaning they are
responsible in other functional areas such as accounts. So when you go
to see
your local solicitor about
your personal injury claim he takes off one
of
his many other ‘hats’ and puts on his personal
injury hat. He may have
qualified as a solicitor
many years ago and is not up to date in
personal injury law but he has dealt with one or two cases in the past.
As a senior solicitor
he commands respect from junior staff and charges
senior solicitor
rates per hour of work requiring his personal time.
The charge rate for a senior solicitor
in London is £150-
£200 per hour.
The Law society published rates are as follows…
You are however allowed the first half-hour consultation free of charge
under the Greeen Form Scheme. There is no longer any funding available
under legal aid which has been replaced by the
‘no-win-no-fee’ system.
Their costs are structured to show their labour time separate from
items of disbursements. The disbursements include medical fees, expert
witness costs, counsel’s fees, etc. Their standard charge can
be marked up
by 100 per cent so that the effective charge rate as in the case cited
above becomes £300- £400 per hour in London. For
out of London costs
these are only marginally lower. See the County Court Cost
guide…….
Some solicitor
firms employ junior staff some of whom are perhaps
studying for their ILEX exams(Institute of Legal Executive). Therefore
you
may be dealing with a para-legal
rather than a qualified solicitor.
However, these juniors although not yet qualified still command costs
up to
£110 per hour for their work.
A lot of the foot work is carried out by junior staff and the senior
solicitor
just cast an eye over the claim to make sure that everything
is
ok. However, the firms costs may show a breakdown of x number of hours
work by a junior x number of hours by an associate and x number of
hours by a senior solicitor.
They also have a habit of running to counsel for advice
on the most
trivial of issues. Even in a simple case they will obtain counsels
advice
on either or both liability and quantum. This pushes up their costs by
a huge amount. Counsel’s fees could add £500 or
more in a simple case
and £1500 or more in a fairly complex claim.
In London a junior solicitor
would receive a fixed salary of say
£45,000 pa. An Associate is likely to be on £75,000
plus profit sharing. Your
senior solicitor
takes the cream at £200,000 pa plus profits
sharing.
On the other hand the average claimant is earning £13500-
£20,000 in
London.
So when you go to see your local solicitor
don’t be too
disappointed if
he is unfortunately detained on the golf course and cannot see you.
His secretary will advise you that he is with another client but she can
take a message and he will get back to you.
If you are involved in a personal injury claim at the moment then you
may wish to take a look at "The
Personal Injury Claims Guide for DIY
Claimants".
You will learn from this 50 pages information-packed easy to
understand and user-friendly guide just what is involved in making your
claim successful. If you proceed to deal with the insurance company
without this invaluable knowledge then you will be at a disadvantage in
terms of winning your claim or obtaining full compensation for your
injuries.
Most solicitors
will push to make sure that the settlement hits the
£1000 mark because that is the 'watershed' figure to ensure
that they
recover their full costs. So as a claimant who has suffered a personal
injury you get £1000 and your solicitor gets
£5000
for his costs. Whose
interests are best served in these circumstances.
When you consider the average cost of claim settlements you will
realise that there is no need for a 'middleman' because that is really
the
role of your solicitor.
And they are not all as highly skilled as you
may
'imagine' them to be. I have had claimants on the phone to me in
distress over their claims because they could not get any information
from
their solicitor
and wanting to negotiate their claim directly.
However, at that point they are locked into a contract with their
solicitor
and liable for his costs if they wish to pull out of the
contract.
Of course, sadly we have to turn them away so that they can first
resolve the issue with their solicitors
before we can discuss their
claim
with them. You can save yourself a lot of these hassles by making a
small investment in your own education by simply taking a copy of 'The
Personal
Injury Claims Guide for DIY Claimants'.
After all it's bad enough suffering the pain and going through the
healing process which could take several months without being
‘short-changed’ by the insurance company when you
submit your claim. The important
point to note is that you do not need to instruct a solicitor for the
majority of personal injury claims. I have personally settled claims for
just over £1000 where the costs from solicitors range
from
£3500 to
£5000 and more.
Would it not be a more equitable proposition that you receive a higher
level of compensation for your injuries and the insurance company saves
on solicitors’
costs so that they can meet the cost of future
claims?
About the Author:
Matrix Jones is a graduate of University of East Anglia and an
Associate of the Chartered Insurance Institute. He has accumulated more
than
25 years in the evaluation and settlement of personal injury claims.
Copyright ©2006-2008 www.PersonalInjuryClaimsGuide.com All
rights
reserved.
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The Publisher has strived to be as accurate and complete as possible in
the creation of this website, notwithstanding the fact that he does not
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due to the rapidly changing nature of the Internet.
This site
is a common sense guide to How Much Is My Personal Injury Solicitor
Worth?. In practical advice websites, like anything else in life, there
are no guarantees of income made. Readers are cautioned to reply on
their own judgment about their individual circumstances to act
accordingly.
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