Published: 31 May 2018
Author: Stringer Clark

Our No Win No Fee OR Expenses fee policy

Most people are familiar with the No Win No Fee policy offered by most injury lawyers. But, despite appearances, not all fee policies are the same.

Every client that comes in asks us to clearly explain what our No Win No Fee policy means, and it's at that point that we do try to help them understand how it's different from anyone else’s.

The standard no-win no-fee policy that applies in the vast majority of our claims is that you will only pay legal costs if you have a successful outcome on your claim. Part of any claim involves the incurring of disbursements and those disbursements are, for example, barristers fees, doctors records, doctor's report fees, and so on. So you do build up a number of expenses associated with a claim.

Our policy is that we will fund those expenses on your behalf and if at the end of the day you are unsuccessful you won't get a bill for them. We wear those costs.

Not all fee policies are the same

A lot of other firms will actually pass those costs on to the client. Law firms should make it clear in their cost agreement that, while they might fund those expenses upfront for you, if you are unsuccessful you will need to pay them back. They should also draw your attention to this when explaining the fine print in their cost agreements. But mostly, they don’t.

The expenses add up. They can total thousands of dollars. So, you may find yourself in the position of having failed to gain a compensation payout AND having to pay back all the associated expenses. Not a great outcome.

The aim of our policy is that, once we back a client’s claim because we believe it will be successful, but then somewhere along the line something goes wrong with the claim (and mind you, that doesn’t happen very often), we want that client to walk out in the same financial position they were in when they came to us. That is, that they don't suffer a financial disadvantage. We have a success rate in excess of 95% so you can have a very high degree of confidence that you will walk out in a much better financial position.