Typical protocol in no-win no fee agreements

[samwardill]

I have a question about no-win no fee agreements. I am a layman and I know nothing about these types of contracts. I assume no-win no fee contracts typically allow the solicitor to withdraw from the agreement (i.e. if they review the case and decide it is no longer proportionate to proceed). Can anyone tell me if typically the solicitor is typically allowed to arbitrarily decide to review the case and terminate the case because they have changed their mind about the proportionality of the claim? Alternatively is their right to terminate conditional on case developments, new facts or evidence coming to light that would reasonably cause them solicitor to review and alter their assessment of proportionality?

[Guest]

Re: Typical protocol in no-win no fee agreements

I have a question about no-win no fee agreements. I am a layman and I know nothing about these types of contracts. I assume no-win no fee contracts typically allow the solicitor to withdraw from the agreement (i.e. if they review the case and decide it is no longer proportionate to proceed). Can anyone tell me if typically the solicitor is typically allowed to arbitrarily decide to review the case and terminate the case because they have changed their mind about the proportionality of the claim? Alternatively is their right to terminate conditional on case developments, new facts or evidence coming to light that would reasonably cause them solicitor to review and alter their assessment of proportionality?

It is an interesting point. I have just entered into one of these with a firm on a clinical negligence matter and was reading their details. If I decide to not follow their advice and for instance accept settlement or indeed not accept a settlement for instance I would be liable for any extra fees or charges incurred it seems. However as you say they are free to terminate the agreement and discontinue any representation whenever they feel the case is no longer viable.

This is I suppose fine when you consider that the only issue is a financial one, however what about when the issue is regarding the bringing to brook of a dangerous and ongoing practice which may have future consequences for other people. I of course realize that solicitors have to meet their costs, however it does seem to be the case that they do "dump" less profitable cases based purely on the amount of money involved.

There is a perception which places solicitors and lawyers in the same bracket as say doctors and nurses which in my view is totally unjustified, in general they are there to make money out of your situation, the same as a plumber or builder(and the same criteria should be used when choosing one), do not fall into the trap of thinking that they are trying to help us out of some legal version of the Hippocratic oath.

[des8]

Re: Typical protocol in no-win no fee agreements

It is dangerous to assume there is a "typical" conditional fee agreement. The terms and conditions vary between firms.
The company offering to work on a "no win no fee" basis should carry out an in depth review of the case to ensure the odds of winning are in their favour, but the agreements will have clauses allowing withdrawal for various reasons e.g. non disclosure by client, new evidence causing a review. etc etc
The Law Society have a template contract for lawyers to use, but these documents have always been highly complex and the new CFAs are even more so.
Having said that it is not unknown for companies to realise they have made an error in offering a CFA and try to terminate the agreement to avoid the loss to themselves.
Without knowing a lot more about a particular case (wording of agreement, copies of submissions to solicitor and subsequent correspondence) it is difficult to advise.
Obviously you might not want to post these detail;s on a public forum, and to get proper advice you probably should speak to a specialist contract lawyer