Legal Aid
If you are on a low income or means tested benefits you could be entitled to Legal Aid. Legal Aid is provided by a government body, the Legal Aid Agency, and can help to pay for legal advice.
There is a two stage test to determine eligibility for Legal Aid, a merits test and a means test. You will usually have to provide details of your income, benefits and property. If you’re under 18 you may have to provide details of your parent’s or guardian’s income.
Legal Aid is only available for specific types of cases. Our specialist lawyers dealing with your case can assess your eligibility for Legal Aid.
Legal Expenses Insurance
In some cases you may have a Legal Expenses Insurance policy attached to your household or your car insurance. We can check whether any policies you already have will cover your legal costs.
Private Rates
We can act for you on a private basis if none of the above funding options are available to you. Contact us for further details of our hourly private rates. Fixed fee rates are available for some matters.
Conditional Fee Arrangements
If your case is a personal injury or human rights case we may be able to offer you a Conditional Fee Arrangement (CFA), also known as a no win, no fee agreement, as an alternative to paying for the case privately.
Under the CFA agreement, we won’t charge you for any work done on the case by us unless you win your case so long as you follow the terms of the agreement.
- You ‘win’ if your opponent agrees or is ordered to pay you damages.
- If you lose, you pay us nothing. If you win you can generally expect your opponent to be ordered to pay most of your legal costs. However, due to rules limiting cost recovery introduced by the government on 1st April 2013, not all costs will be recoverable from the Defendant. They also don’t have to pay the premium for the insurance cover that would need to be taken out in your case to protect you against the Defendant’s costs and your own disbursements. This will be explained in further detail should this funding option be appropriate in your case.
Therefore, if your claim is successful, there will need to be a deduction from your compensation at the end of the case. The level of this deduction depends on each case.