No win no fee important details
By: Sujata | Posted: 21st May 2010
What is No Win No Fee Agreement?
Conditional Fee Agreement is also known as 'no win no fee' agreement. According to no win no fee agreement a solicitor will only get paid if he wins the case or if the claim is successful.
In this agreement the solicitor is also entitled to a fee known as Success fee. A success fee is a fee meant to compensate the solicitor for the risk of not being paid if he loses and it also covers the delay of payment by the other party.
The amount of success fee depends on the types of cases and the chance of winning. If a case is settled without a trial then the success fee will be less, compare to trial cases.
The basis fee and the success fee are paid by the other party as a whole or by instalments. There are other costs, apart from solicitor's fee, like the court fee, fee for medical report etc known as disbursements. The losing party has to pay all these costs or part of the costs.
Even if you have signed a Conditional Fee Agreement always remember to ask your solicitor to give you a written estimate about all the likely costs before they start working on your case. Conditional fee agreement definitely removes many financial risks from your shoulders but it does not remove all the financial risks.
What if you lose a case under no win no fee agreement?
If you lose a case then you don't have to pay your solicitors fee but still you might have to pay the legal cost of the successful party like the court fee, fee of the medical report etc. known as disbursement fee.
To avoid paying big bills to your opponent in case you lose your case, your solicitors will advice you to take out legal-expenses insurance. There are many other insurance in the market and you can take one of them by yourself, but if you ask your solicitor to arrange for the insurance then it would be much cheaper. Sometime you don't have to pay the premium but sometimes you may have to pay by yourself.
A no win no fee has to complete a number of formalities and he have to give you information about your case at various stages.
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Tags: risk, insurance, shoulders, solicitors, disbursement, solicitor, medical report, formalities, opponent, instalments, disbursements