Tel: 0800 083 6465   Email: info@brianbarr.co.uk

Funding Your Litigation

When it comes to covering the cost of your claim with Brian Barr Solicitors, you needn’t worry. Most of our cases come to us with funding arrangements already in place, but to make sure you have all the information you need, we’ve set out the main options for you below:

Legal expenses insurance

If you have legal expenses insurance, as long as you comply with the terms of your policy, you won’t need to worry about dealing with any legal costs.
However, often your insurers will tell you that, to take advantage of the policy, you will have to use one of their panel solicitors. There are, however, two important exceptions to this rule:

  1. If court proceedings have been issued, you are entitled to insist on the solicitor of your choice. We can easily find out if proceedings have been issued or about to be issued.  
  2. Yours may well be the type of case where you are entitled to have the solicitor of your choice, even where proceedings have not been issued. The Insurance Ombudsman’s view is that, in valuable or complex cases, the insurer should agree to the appointment of the policyholder’s preferred solicitor at any stage of the claim. Fibromyalgia/ME/chronic pain claims are, by their very nature, complex and we can often liaise with your insurer and convince them to allow us to act for you, even before proceedings have been issued.

‘No win, no fee’ agreement

If you have no suitable legal expenses insurance, we can often act for you under a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA), often called a ‘no win no fee’ arrangement. It all depends on whether you have a good chance of winning and we should be able to gauge that very quickly.

If your insurer refuses to allow you to transfer your insurance to us

If you have suitable legal expenses insurance but your insurer won’t allow you to transfer it to Brian Barr Solicitors (before proceedings are issued), it may be possible for you to reject your existing insurance and enter into a CFA with us, due to our specialist knowledge in this field.

If this happens, we will act under a CFA until proceedings have been issued. At that point, we can act for you under the terms of your insurance policy or simply carry on acting under the CFA.

A decision to reject existing legal expenses insurance in favour of a CFA needs careful consideration and we are happy to present you with the advantages and disadvantages. It is generally better for us to persuade your insurer to allow us to act for you under your existing insurance policy.

Other methods of funding

These might include paying privately, being funded by your Union or applying for public funding. It is worth pointing out that public funding is only available for accident claims in very rare circumstances.

To find out more, call us now on: 0800 083 6465 or email: info@brianbarr.co.uk and we will be happy to reassure you and answer any funding queries you may have.

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