How Legal Fees are Calculated

No Win No Fee Personal Injury Lawyers specialise in personal injury claims and are experts in accident and injury compensation claims, including:

No Win No Fee Personal Injury Lawyers

If you are interested to learn more about what it means when we say that we will undertake your claim for you on a No Win No Fee basis, please go to our webpage entitled, “No Win No Fee Personal Injury Lawyers”.

And if you would like to know more about the personal injury legal services we provide, please refer to our webpage: “Fees & Services”. There you will find details about the personal injury services we provide and the unique way we provide those services to you.

No Win No Fee Personal Injury Lawyers service all of Queensland, with our Head Offices situated in Brisbane City and in Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast . For more information about the areas we service, please go to the following links:

How We Calculate Your Legal Fees When You Receive Your Injury Compensation

One of the more common questions we are asked is, “What percentage of my compensation payment will you take for legal fees?”. It seems to be a common belief that a personal injury lawyer who handles an injury claim on a No Win No Fee basis will take a large percentage of whatever the injury compensation amount achieved for their client. Well the good news is that this is a complete fallacy and in fact, it is actually against the law for personal injury lawyers to do this.

We can only charge you for the work we reasonably need to do to achieve your compensation payment. So we cannot charge you random percentages – we have to do the work for which we charge you.

We therefore base our fees on hourly rates, which vary according to the expertise required to perform the work involved. The work is separated into categories of legal and non-legal work. Legal work is undertaken by expert legal advisors, lawyers, 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.

Throughout your case, all work undertaken on your file will be 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 totalled up to provide a total amount for your professional fees.

On top of professional fees, we will include the expenses that have been incurred in the running of your case. These are often referred to as “outlays” or “disbursements”. 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. Outlays include any costs reasonably incurred in 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. Unfortunately, GST will apply to the legal service we have provided to you as it is a “service” and therefore GST is unavoidable. This is a tax of 10% on our professional fees.

If you would like to learn more about how you will be charged for legal fees at the end of your 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 claim?

Every personal injury claim is as individual as the next, requiring varying levels of legal work to achieve a successful outcome. Because of this, we are unable to advise you upfront of what your legal fees will be at the conclusion 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 actually do provide you with this information during your claim. At appropriate stages of your case, we will advise you of what your legal fees are and what they are likely to be as you progress through the next stages of the personal injury claim process. This means you are always fully aware of where you stand throughout your case.

Importantly, we keep you advised about the “Commerciality” of offers made during your claim

What we mean by advising you of the “commerciality” of offers made during your claim is that we make sure you are always aware of getting the “right result” from your personal injury claim. During your case, you will be made offers of settlement by the other side to try to resolve your claim. Whenever an offer is made, we will advise you of what the offer means to you money-wise, in your hand, after all legal fees and any statutory refunds are paid, and what in-hand amount could be achieved if you were to reject that offer and proceed with your case. So, basically we are advising 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 accepting the offer now, than if you continued with your claim to the next stage in the hope of achieving a higher settlement offer, taking the increased legal costs of proceeding further into account.

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, proceeding with your case, might be good for us because we achieve more in legal fees, but it may not be what’s best for you as you may end up with less in your hand from your compensation payment. We advise you about all of this each time an offer of settlement is made during your claim, so you know where you stand and you can make a fully informed decision about your case.

No Win No Fee Guarantee

No Win No Fee Personal Injury 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. This is because of what is called the “Fifty-Fifty Rule”.

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. This means you will never be left in the situation where you are owing us anything for legal fees or you are left with no compensation.

Here is how the “50/50 Rule”, works:

  • 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 has funded for treatment of your injuries, the subject of your compensation claim (“claim injuries”);
    • Centrelink for any benefits you received because you could not work due to your claim injuries;
    • WorkCover Queensland or self-insurers for workers’ compensation benefits received due to your claim injuries.
  • Of course, we claim these Statutory Refunds for you in your compensation claim under past economic loss and past medical expenses, so you are not out of pocket when these refunds are made.
  • So, basically the 50/50 Rule says that after your total 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 the remaining sum.

In Some Cases, You May Have Entitlement to Recover Legal Costs from the Insurer or Other Party in Your Personal Injury Claim

In most cases of personal injury, there is a right to claim recovery of legal costs incurred in the running of your case from the defendant insurer, or where there is no insurer, the party at fault. However, thresholds usually apply before this entitlement operates, that is, a certain level of damages must be met before legal costs can be claimed.

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 cases of work injury claims, recovery of legal costs from WorkCover Queensland, or the workers’ compensation self-insurer, is highly restricted. You must have a very serious injury (it must be assessed at an impairment rating of 20% or more) to be entitled to claim any reimbursement of legal costs involved in your work injury claim.

In cases where you suffer a work injury and there is also a claim against a third party who contributed to the injury occurring, then the rules change. In such case, you will not need to meet the thresholds to recover legal costs against the at-fault third party involved in your claim.

In any case where you have a right to recover legal costs, whether involving a motor accident, work injury, medical negligence or other type of injury compensation claim, it will only be in very extra-ordinary circumstances that you will actually recover all your legal costs involved in your case. Usually, only one third to one half of your actual legal fees are recoverable from the defendant insurer, or where there is no insurer, the at-fault party.

Generally in all personal injury claims, special rules apply where offers of settlement made during a claim have “cost consequences”, meaning that if you make an offer of settlement during your claim that is not accepted and you later equal or beat that offer at trial, it may greatly improve your entitlement to legal costs.

The best outcome that can be achieved in the recovery of legal costs in a personal injury claim is where the Court Orders that a party has to pay “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 (as noted above).

If you or someone you know has a query about bringing a personal injury claim, or a disability insurance claim, give us a call today

If you, or someone you know has a query about a personal injury claim, or a claim for disability insurance, whether their injury is from a car accident, work incident, medical mishap or has arisen in some other manner, please don’t hesitate to CONTACT US and we will be more than happy to answer any questions you or your friend or relative may have.

In just a short discussion, we will be able to provide expert advice as to whether you, or your friend or relative has a personal injury claim to pursue, the compensation entitlements involved as well as the likely prospects of success of the case. You can contact us by free calling 1300 388 383 , chat to us via our Livechat service (see the Livechat icon below), or you can submit one of our Request 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 is NO OBLIGATION attached.

Never forget that strict time limits apply to personal injury claims, so don’t delay investigating if you have a claim. Putting off a simple phone call today, could mean you miss out tomorrow.