Your case could be under settled, you could be charged a fee and you could lose compensation.
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Article by
Chris Lucas |
It’s an unfortunate reality that accidents happen. Car accidents, accidents at work, accidents in public places: the one thing that they all have in common is that they can cause injury, create inconvenience and in some cases change people’s lives forever.
If you suffer as a result of an accident which is not your fault, you will usually be entitled to claim compensation from the liable party. For this, you will often need a solicitor. Many people will already know this, perhaps from information they have read on the Internet, adverts they have seen on TV or their basic knowledge of English law.
What you may not know is that many personal injury law firms, particularly larger ‘factory’-type firms, buy their cases from third party companies known as referrers. A referrer could be your own insurance company: for example, if you have a personal injury claim and legal expenses cover as part of your policy, your insurer may refer your case to a panel firm of solicitors. Another type of referrer is a claims management company (or CMC for short): these companies buy and sell data and they make their money by obtaining information from injured clients and selling their cases to panel firms. The access some CMCs have to data can be surprising and they will often bombard clients with calls and put a lot of pressure on them to sign up as their representatives will often be working on commission.
The panel firms which pay referral fees for their cases are typically costs-driven, they churn over high volumes of work (much of it low value) and they often implement standard practices across the board. The culture of these firms is therefore much like a factory rather than a traditional law firm, which is why we refer to them as ‘factory’ firms.
