Legal Expenses Insurance
If you have this, as long as you comply with the terms of your policy you won’t need to worry about dealing with any legal costs. However, often your insurers will tell you that, to take advantage of the policy, you will have to use one of their panel solicitors. There are, however, two important exceptions to this rule:
1. If proceedings have been started, you are entitled to insist on the solicitor of your choice. We can easily find out if proceedings have been started.
2. Yours may well be the type of case where you are entitled to have the solicitor of your choice even before proceedings. The Insurance Ombudsman’s view is that, in valuable or complex cases, the insurer should agree to the appointment of the policyholder’s preferred solicitor at any stage of the claim. Fibromyalgia and chronic pain claims are complex. We can often liaise with your insurer and convince them to allow us to act for you.
‘No Win, No Fee’ Agreement
If you have no suitable legal expenses insurance, we can often act for you under a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA), often called a ‘no win no fee’ arrangement. It all depends on whether you have a good chance of winning. We should be able to gauge that very quickly.
You pay a proportion of your damages to us if you win, absolutely nothing if you lose.
Other Methods of Funding
These might include paying privately, being funded by your Union or applying for public funding. Public funding is only available for accident claims in very rare circumstances.