BEWARE – ACCIDENT CLAIM SECRETS EXPOSED
As a Personal Injury Solicitor of over 20 years experience I am prepared to tell you the secrets of the accident claim industry.
The first thing you should know is that only a solicitor can truly advise you and present your case in court.
That may seem obvious but you should beware of companies who may offer to look after your case and advise you purely for financial gain.
CLAIMS COMPANIES
Claims companies have only been allowed to exist recently. They are regulated by the Ministry of Justice but are not solicitors and cannot claim to be experts in personal injury. They often advertise on television and have websites and other marketing material that portray them as being a company that can help you from start to finish. THEY CANNOT.
All a claims company can do is obtain your details and sell those details to a solicitor on their panel. Yes that’s right all they do is sell your case to solicitors. Those solicitors on the panel quite often will engage in an auction to buy your case and fees for cases are in the region of £800.00 per case.
If you instruct a claims company all you are doing is allowing that company to take £800.00 from the cost available to spend upon your representation.
If you wanted open heart surgery would you engage a plumber?
Answer – No.
So why do people engage claims companies who can do no more for them than sell their name to a solicitor?
INSURANCE COMPANIES
Most insurance companies will also have panels of solicitors to whom they sell cases. You should be aware that in most road traffic accident cases that settle for under £10,000.00 (which is well over 90% of cases) there is only around £1,350.00 available to spend upon your legal representation. Most solicitors on insurer’s panels will be paying upwards of £800.00 to receive cases and therefore by pure mathematics they are only left with £550.00 in which to represent you.
We here at Lampkin & Co even after paying you the £250.00 thank you payment would have £1,100.00 to spend on your representation. You decide where you are likely to receive the best advice.
UNIONS
It may shock you to learn that if you are injured at work and ask for assistance from your union again they will sell your case to their panel solicitors. Personally I would be horrified if the union to whom I had paid weekly or monthly subscriptions part of which was to cover me for legal fees, then merely sold my case and pocketed a reward.
WHY WE THINK REFERRAL FEES ARE SO WRONG
As I have stated above in road traffic accident cases any solicitor that does the case is usually only allowed to recover a fixed sum of costs (this is exceeded for high value cases). This sum is in the region of £1,350.00 and that is the sum that has been agreed by all parties being insurance companies, the Government and claimant lawyers as to what is a reasonable amount for a solicitor to receive to be able to properly represent somebody injured in a road traffic accident. If however solicitors are paying £800.00 or upwards to receive cases they can only be left with £550.00. How then can they possibly hope to properly represent and advise clients when the official figure that they need is given at £1,350.00? Obviously they have to cut corners.
We at Lampkin & Co campaign against the referral fee system and offer our clients a £250.00 incentive payment to instruct us directly and to avoid entering into that system. We want to make it so obvious to our clients that their interests are best served by instructing solicitors directly.
Read more about our £250 incentive payment.
What to do next?
Want to know more? Call us on 08081 782110 or Start Your Claim.
