As a disclaimer, I don’t do ‘no win, no fee‘, nor do I do personal injuries or workers compensation cases. So, consider this an educated outsider’s perspective.
Taking on a ‘no win, no fee’ case is always a gamble for a law firm. This is because, as the name suggests, if there is no win then they don’t get paid. Taking on that amount of risk in your day to day business is not good sense, so they limit their risk in a number of ways:
- Uplift fees. This is an allowable increase in fees over time to offset the fact that the law firm has had to perform work and incur expenses for an often lengthy time period without payment. Think of it like interest for late payment;
- Having a specific definition of ‘win’. What you think of as winning isn’t necessarily what constitutes winning for the purposes of getting the fee. For example, if a reasonable settlement offer is made this can be considered a sufficient ‘win’ to trigger the fee being paid. If you refuse to accept the settlement, you can become liable for payment of the incurred fees (i.e. the ‘no win, no fee’ status goes out the door); and
- They don’t take cases which they don’t think they can get to the ‘win’ (see above point).