Compensation Advice: How to fund the cost of receiving criminal injury legal advice from a UK solicitor
Compensation advice: Discover how to obtain criminal injury compensation advice from a UK solicitor free of charge and the cheapest options of funding your legal costs when free advice is not available.
Does the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority pay your legal costs of making a claim?
“No” – unfortunately the Criminal Injury Compensation Authority does not pay any money towards your legal costs – if you decide to use a personal injury lawyer to make your criminal injury claim you must find a way to fund your legal costs.
Click Criminal Injury Compensation Authority to learn about the CICA.
Can you receive criminal injury compensation advice from a personal injury solicitor without having to pay any legal costs?
Compensation Advice
“Yes” – there are a couple of ways you can receive UK criminal injury compensation advice from a solicitor without having to pay any legal costs, including:
1. Seeking free legal advice from a personal injury solicitor during a “law clinic”
Many legal firms have what is known as a “law clinic” – this is the name given to one day or evening of each month in a law firm when you can obtain legal advice for free. Most law firms which have a personal injury department will provide a “law clinic”, but the amount of time you can spend with the lawyer is normally limited to half an hour.
Legal firms who provide a “law clinic” will often work on a staff rota – I recommend you check in advance that a specialist personal injury solicitor will be available for the day you wish to attend.
2. “Legal protection cover” on your household contents insurance policy
If you own or rent your home you will normally have some form of contents insurance, which will often give you the benefit of what is known as “legal protection cover” – this is an insurance policy which will fund your legal costs for making a compensation claim following a personal or criminal injury.
If you have contents insurance and are uncertain if you have “legal protection cover” which will help you make a CICA claim – telephone your insurer’s helpline today and they will be happy to help you.
Click legal protection cover / no win no fee to find out what you must do if you have the benefit of legal protection cover
If you have to fund your legal costs to make a criminal injury claim for compensation – what are the cheapest options available?
Sometimes it is necessary to pay a lawyer to help you with your criminal injury claim for compensation – this might be because your claim is very complicated, involves large sums of money, your initial application has been refused or the offer of compensation is too low so you need help to review or appeal the decision.
There are three main ways of funding these costs:
1. Contingency fee agreement
As the CICA does not pay any legal costs a solicitor cannot offer you a “no win no fee agreement”, but can offer you a “contingency fee agreement”. Under a “contingency fee agreement” – should you lose your claim you will have no legal costs to pay, but should you win your claim your solicitor can take a percentage of your compensation.
Click no win no fee to learn about funding a personal injury claim with a no win no fee agreement.
2. Fixed fee
A personal injury solicitor may agree to do a task or provide compensation advice for a fixed amount of money agreed in advance – this is known as a “fixed fee”. For example, your lawyer may agree to attend at a CICA appeal hearing on your behalf for a £500 plus VAT.
3. Private rate
A lawyer will always be prepared to act on your behalf being paid a sum of money for each hour of work done on your behalf – known as a “private rate”. For example, he may charge £150 per hour plus VAT and agree to bill you every few months for the work done on your behalf.
I would recommend using a “contingency fee agreement” when the amount of compensation you are likely to receive is quite small and a “fixed fee” or “private rate” for larger claims. For example 30% of £1,000 is value for money, but it would be far cheaper to pay a fixed sum of say £1,000 for a claim worth £20,000 than to pay 30% of your claim (£6,000).
Criminal injury compensation advice summary
On this page you have learned that the Criminal Injury Compensation Authority does not pay any money towards your legal costs in making a claim, when you can receive criminal injury compensation advice for free and the cheapest options available to fund your own legal costs.
You now know everything about making and funding a criminal injury claim for compensation so I recommend you:
Click free legal compensation advice to find out how to receive free compensation advice from a specialist solicitor for all types of UK accident claim.
