Providing your personal injury claim is being processed on a ‘no win, no fee’ basis, your lawyer for injury will get paid in one of two ways. They will either recover their costs from the other side, or they will take a percentage of your compensation as payment.

Taking a percentage of your compensation as payment

Taking a percentage of a client’s compensation is actually standard practice in the personal injury legal profession. Under ‘no win, no fee’, the claimant has no legal fees to pay upfront nor any legal fees to pay throughout the claims process.

Instead, the client pays their lawyer’s fees from their compensation. This agreement tends to satisfy all parties, because the lawyer gets paid what they are owed and the costs never hit the client’s back pocket.

At the time of writing, the maximum percentage a lawyer for injury can take as a fee to cover their costs is 25%. That’s 25% of the total settlement figure. So if the total compensation amount comes to £20,000, then the lawyer can take a maximum of £5,000 as a fee. This may sound like a lot, and giving up a quarter of the compensation you are owed may be a bitter pill to swallow, but your lawyer will have provided you with an invaluable service over the last few months and they are legally entitled to recover their costs. Plus, it is only fair that they get paid for all of their hard work, isn’t it?

Recovering costs from the other side as payment

Alternatively, it may be agreed between your injury lawyer and the other side’s legal department that your solicitor can recover their costs from the other side.

This is almost always the case when personal injury claims go to court and the ruling is in favour of the claimant – the other side is not only ordered to pay compensation, but they are also ordered to cover any legal costs as well. But, this kind of arrangement can be agreed out of court under certain circumstances, and especially so on high-value cases.

If your solicitor believes that they will be able to recover their costs from the other side, then this will be explained to you. However, there is never any guarantee that this will be the case, so you should always be prepared for your lawyer to take a percentage of your financial compensation as payment.

Sometimes, a compromise can be made where most of your lawyer’s fees are paid by the other side leaving only 5-10% remaining. In this case, you would likely get to keep 85-90% of your compensation, however such agreements are not always popular with the other side.