How Solicitors Deal with Personal Injury Compensation in the UK

When a UK solicitor receives your claim for personal injury compensation, whether it is an accident at work, in the street, in a building or a car, the solicitor takes detailed instructions from you as to how the accident has happened. At that stage, they will discuss with you the various ways in which your claim can be funded, such as on a private fee paying basis, a conditional fee basis (commonly known as ‘no win – no fee’) or it can be funded by legal expenses insurance.  Legal Aid is hardly ever available these days to pursue these cases.

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Legal expenses insurance can be found in a variety of sources. You don’t always have to buy an individual policy as you can sometimes find this on the contents policy of your home or the buildings policy of your home or sometimes even on a car policy.  You may not even know the coverage is available to you or that it is afforded by the policy.  Your solicitor has to make enquiries as to whether there is legal expenses insurance before he can pursue the option of a conditional fee agreement.

Once funding has been agreed, the solicitor will write to you to confirm the position and then will write a letter of claim to the proposed defendant, i.e. the person who you say or your solicitor believes owes you compensation.   More than one letter of claim may be necessary as there may be more than one potential defendant.  For instance, in a car accident there may be two or three cars involved in the collision and there may be several potential causes of the accident.  

What to Expect During the Protocol Period

The defendant's insurance company has to respond to the letter of claim within 21 days.  Once they have done so, they then have three months in which to investigate that claim.  This period between the letter of claim and the end of the three months is known as the 'protocol period'. 

During the protocol period a personal injury lawyer cannot take any action in relation to your claim, unless not to do so would cause a claim to be barred by time.  If the claim is approaching the third anniversary of the accident, i.e. the date by which it has to be determined, the solicitor may issue some Court proceedings as this stop the clock and allow more time to deal with the claim.

Also during this time the defendants will be obliged to provide documents in support of any defence they wish to bring forward or in support of any allegations of blame against you.

If, at the end of the protocol period there are still issues between the parties, the solicitor may advise you to commence Court proceedings to determine those issues.

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Criteria for Your Personal Injury Compensation Case 

The main criterion (although there are others) that determines how much of the Court's resources are applied to a case is its financial value.  Generally, cases worth up to £5,000 are allocated to the small claims track and will usually be determined in an informal manner in a private hearing in Chambers.  However, personal injury cases over £1,000 are not dealt with in the small claims track but in the track above which is known as the fast track.  These are the cases above £5000 but less than £15,000 and also including personal injury cases in excess of £1,000.  Cases above £15,000 are allocated to the multi track.

The Court will give directions during the course of litigation as to how the claim will be determined.  Directions are simply instructions from the Judge to the parties involved so that the Judge can make sure that when the case is decided at Court all of the evidence is there.

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