Funding your claim

Solicitor’s Fees & Payments when funding a personal injury claim

No Win, No Fee Agreement (Conditional Fee Agreement)

In the vast majority of cases, we recommend a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA) known as a “No Win, No Fee”.  We will also recommend that at some point during the claim it will be necessary to take out an ‘After the Event’ (ATE) Insurance Policy which provides cover in order to pay your opponent’s legal costs if the Court makes an Order for you to pay all or part of any of your opponent’s legal costs during the case and disbursements.

The effect of a No Win, No Fee Agreement means that we will only get paid your claim is successful.  If we are successful in recovering compensation on your behalf and we cannot recover all of our legal costs from your opponent, we will not require you to pay the shortfall.

ATE Insurance

This is an insurance policy which provides cover for your opponent’s legal costs in the event that the Court orders you to pay all or part of those costs during your case. 

If we do recommend that you take out an ATE Insurance Policy, we will ensure that we obtain the most competitive policies in terms of lower premiums.  In many cases however we bear the initial burden of expenses such as medical reports and Counsel’s fees.  It is only when we consider it appropriate to take out insurance, when for example Court Proceedings are issued, and therefore you have a potential costs exposure.

The ATE Insurance Policy will be included in addition to the success fee.

If Your Claim Is Successful

If your claim is successful then we are entitled to recover our basic legal fees and disbursements from the losing party.

If you win, we will charge a success fee which is capped at 25% inclusive of VAT as deducted from your compensation. 

We will always explain a success fee that we will charge at the outset of your case when deciding whether or not you should pursue your claim.

How Much Personal Injury Compensation Will I Receive If My Claim Is Successful

75% of your compensation because we cap our success fees at 25%.

In the event that we are required to take out an ATE Insurance Policy, we will advise you of the premium which will be deducted from your damages.

Do I Have To Pay If My Case Is Unsuccessful?

No.  A No Win, No Fee Agreement means that if your case did not succeed then we will carry the costs that we have incurred including any disbursements such as medical reports, Court fees and Counsel’s fees.

Non- CFA Work

People responsible for your case:-

Anthony Duffy is the Director who has overall responsibility for your case and will carry out most of the work.

Charges & Expenses

Duffy & Co charges are based on the time spent by the solicitors and other staff in respect of any work which they carry out on your behalf.  This will include meetings, preparing and working on papers, any time spent travelling and waiting, for example Court time spent representing you in Court with or without a Barrister, correspondence, making and receiving telephone calls.

Our time is recorded and charged to you in units of six minutes.  Therefore a telephone conversation with you lasting four minutes will be charges at one unit or 1/10th of the fee earner’s hourly rate.  Every e-mail, telephone call, letter or document which we receive or send is charged as one unit unless the time involved in the activity exceeds six minutes, for example a telephone call lasting 15 minutes will be charged as three units.  The current charging rates applicable are as follows:-

Anthony Duffy – Principle solicitor – £310.00 per hour

Sue Bagley – Paralegal – £130.00 per hour

These hourly rates have to be reviewed throughout periodically to reflect increases in overhead costs and inflation.  Normally the rates are reviewed each year.  If a review is carried out before this time as concluded we will inform you of any variation in the rates before it takes place.  In work that is not funded under a Conditional Fee Agreement, the amount of our costs which you will have to pay may be greater than the amount that we can recover from another party in the case. 

VAT

We will add VAT to our charges at the rate that applied when the work is done.  At present VAT is 20%. 

Key Stages – Timescales

It is impossible to be precise over the length of time that an individual claim will take.  Usually from the outset of receiving instructions, we anticipate that your case should take two years to completion.  We will provide you with an interim bill and a breakdown of our costs 12 months from the date of your instructions and if you prefer, an update every six months of the work we have undertaken. 

If your claim is funded under a Conditional Fee Agreement there will be no interim bill submitted for you to pay.  If however your case is funded in a private basis we may ask you for a contribution towards your costs which would primarily include the cost of disbursements such as medical reports and Counsel’s fees but we would advise you of the likely cost at each stage.

We would anticipate that this stage be reached at the first anniversary of your claim and reviewed thereafter on an annual basis.