Palmers’ Compensation Lawyers are a No Win No Fee Personal Injury Law firm, expert in the area of personal injury law and accident and injury compensation. This includes claims for injury sustained from car accidents, workplace incidents, medical malpractice, slip, trip & fall incidents, defective products, boating incidents, animal attacks, and from the wrongful or negligent actions of another.
No Win No Fee Personal Injury Lawyers
If you would like to know more about what we mean when we say we provide our services on a No Win No Fee basis, go to our webpage at the following link: No Win No Fee Injury Lawyers. It will provide you with all the information you need to know about our No Win No Fee service.
And if you would like to learn about the personal injury services we provide, go to our webpage at the link: Fees & Services, and you will find detailed information about the personal injury and insurance legal services we provide and the unique way we provide those services to you.
Our Head Offices are situated in Brisbane City and on the Gold Coast, however, we service all of Queensland as well as New South Wales personal injury claims. To find out more about the areas we service, you will find this information at our webpages:
- Brisbane No Win No Fee Personal Injury Lawyers;
- Gold Coast No Win No Fee Personal Injury Lawyers;
- Contact Us.
How Your Legal Fees are Calculated when you receive your injury compensation
The majority of people believe that personal injury lawyers’ fees are based on a percentage of the compensation obtained for your claim, however, this is actually not permitted at law. We can only charge you for the work we have to do to achieve your compensation pay out, and nothing more. We cannot just charge you fees at random percentages of your compensation amount.
How we charge you is therefore based on hourly rates, which vary according to the expertise required to perform the work involved. We separate the work into legal and non-legal work. Legal work is undertaken by expert legal advisors, specialising in personal injury law, and this work will be charged at a higher rate. Non-legal work is undertaken by administrative support staff, and includes such work as typing documents and correspondence, telephone messaging, reception work, photocopying and collating, organising medical appointments and chasing up requests for information etc. Non-legal work is charged at a much lesser rate than legal-work because it does not require legal expertise.
During your case, all work undertaken on your file is recorded along with the time taken for the performance of the work, and at the end of your claim, all non-legal and legal work times are tallied up to provide a total amount for your professional fees.
On top of our professional fees, we include the expenses we have incurred in running your case. These expenses include such things as payments due or owing for medical reports and records, expert reports, Court filing fees, barrister’s fees, radiology costs, courier fees, photocopying, telephone calls, facsimile transmissions, postage, etc. They include any reasonably incurred costs required for the proper running of your claim.
So our professional fees are added together with your legal expenses incurred during your case, and this forms the total of our costs and outlays. There will of course be GST applied to our professional fees, as we are providing you with a service, and the Government will require this tax to be paid on our services. Unfortunately, this cannot be avoided.
If you would like to know more about how we calculate our legal fees at the end of a personal injury claim, feel free to request one of our FREE Claim Info Packs, by clicking on the link here or the button at the top right-hand side of this webpage.
How much will my legal fees be at the end of my case?
Every case is different and each case therefore requires varying levels of legal work to achieve a resolution, and because of this we are not able to tell you what your legal fees will be at the commencement of your case. We will however, be able to give you an idea of this as your claim progresses through the various stages of the personal injury claim process, and we do actually do this during your claim. At appropriate stages or your claim, we advise you of what your legal fees are and what they are likely to be as you proceed with your claim, so you are fully aware of where you stand throughout your case.
We advise you about the “Commerciality” of any offers made during your claim
And when you are being offered compensation to settle your case, we advise you of what that offer will mean to you in your hand, after all legal fees are paid, and what in-hand amount could be achieved if you were to reject that offer and proceed with your case. So what we do is advise you of the “Commerciality” of the settlement offer made to you, that is, whether you are likely to get a better in-hand amount from your case taking the offer now, than if you continued with your claim to the next stage in the hope of achieving a higher settlement offer, given the legal costs involved in achieving that higher compensation amount.
Sometimes proceeding to the next stage of a claim in search of a higher compensation payment, can result in a lower in-hand amount to you because of the legal costs involved in achieving it. So, it might be good for us that you proceed with your case as we achieve more legal fees, but it may not be best for you. We advise you about all of this each time an offer of settlement is made to you during your claim, so you know where you stand and you can make a fully informed decision about your case.
Palmers Compensation Lawyers’ Guarantee to You
Palmers’ Compensation Lawyers makes a guarantee to you that the amount you have to pay us for our professional services at the end of your claim, when you receive your compensation, will never be more than the amount you receive from your claim.
So if you are concerned that, should we obtain compensation for you at the end of your case, our legal fees will be more than your compensation amount and you will be left owing us something, or we will take all of your compensation to pay our legal fees, then you should not be. Because of our guarantee to you, this cannot happen.
What is the 50/50 Rule and how does it work?
Another reason why you do not have to be concerned that all your compensation will end up going to pay legal fees, is because at law, this just cannot happen.
Pursuant to the provisions of the Legal Profession Act 2007 (Qld), in the event we obtain compensation for your claim, we cannot, at law, take all of your compensation to pay for our legal fees and you will never be left owing us anything for legal fees with no compensation. The specific Rule in question is called “the 50/50 Rule”, and how it works is as follows:
- At the end of your case, our professional fees cannot be more than what we can charge you under the 50/50 Rule, and if they are higher, then we must reduce our fees so that we are compliant with the 50/50 Rule;
- The 50/50 Rule calculates the professional fees we can only charge you for your claim as follows: The Total Compensation Amount – (Statutory Refunds + Outlays incurred during your case) ÷ 2;
- So you are aware, Statutory Refunds are refunds that must be paid from your compensation amount pursuant to law. These include such things as refunding the following Government Departments or workers’ compensation insurers:
- Medicare for any medical treatment it funded relating to your injuries;
- Centrelink for any benefits you received because you could not work due to your injuries;
- WorkCover Queensland or self-insurers for workers’ compensation benefits received due to your injuries.
- Of course, we claim these expenses for you in your claims for compensation, so you are not out of pocket when these refunds are made.
- So, basically the 50/50 Rule says that after your total gross compensation amount is reduced for all Statutory Refunds and outlays incurred in your case, then we can only charge for our professional services at one half of this sum.
You May Be Entitled To Recover Legal Costs From the Insurer In Your Personal Injury Claim
In some cases of personal injury, you can recover legal costs incurred in the running of your claim from the defendant insurer. In cases of motor vehicle accidents , medical negligence claims and public liability claims, thresholds exist for the right to claim legal costs, which if not met, then there will be no entitlement to costs recovery at all, or what you will be entitled to recover will be significantly restricted by Regulation (normally termed “Regulation Costs” because the limited costs you can recover are stipulated under Regulations).
In work injury claims, recovery of any costs incurred in pursuing your claim from WorkCover Queensland, or the workers’ compensation self-insurer, is highly restricted. You must have a very serious injury to be entitled to claim any reimbursement of your legal costs involved in your work injury claim.
If you do have entitlement to recovery of legal costs from the defendant insurer, then even if they are not restricted by legislation where you don’t meet requisite thresholds, it will only be in very extra-ordinary circumstances that you will recover all your legal costs involved in your case. You will normally only recover approximately one third to one half of your actual legal costs from the defendant insurer.
The best outcome in relation to recovery of your legal costs from the “other side”, is where a Court orders that you receive “indemnity costs”. This is where the defendant has to pay all your legal costs incurred in the running of your case. However, this Order is only given in special circumstances, and is basically used as a form of penalty to a party who, the Court considers has acted unreasonably in respect to the claim, such as elongating a claim unnecessarily or has been unreasonable in their approach to the claim or offers of settlement made during the pre-court or trial process.
If you or someone you know has a query about bringing a personal injury claim, or a disability insurance claim, CONTACT US today
Palmers’ Compensation Lawyers are experts in personal injury claims. If you, or someone you know has a query about bringing a personal injury claim or a claim for disability insurance, then please CONTACT US today and we will be more than happy to answer any questions you or your friend or relative may have.
Your consultation will provide you with expert advice as to whether there is a valid personal injury claim to pursue and the entitlements involved. We can advise as to the prospects of success of the case, and how much compensation is likely from pursuing a personal injury claim.
You can contact us by free calling 1300 388 383 , chat to us via our Livechat service, or you can submit one of our FREE Instant Case Appraisal forms on our website. If you would like, ask for one of our FREE Claim Info Packs, to learn about your personal injury claim.
Our Personal Injury Expert will be available to take your call or enquiry 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so you can contact us anytime, day or night, and obtain the answers you are looking for.
Your enquiry will be completely FREE of charge, 100% CONFIDENTIAL & there will be NO OBLIGATION attached.