You are not under any obligation to use a solicitor. However, accident at work claims cover a wide range of accidents. Some are relatively minor – perhaps a cut finger or bumps and bruising to knees following a trip, slip or fall accident.
Other types of accidents at work leave the injured worker with catastrophic injuries that will change their lives forever. Many accidents fall between the two highly different severities we’ve mentioned.
Whatever type of accident at work claim you have suffered and however severe your injuries are, we are pretty clear in our advice: don’t try and take on the claim yourself. Your compensation claim is hopefully a one-off event. You want to ensure that you recover the maximum compensation possible.
Just ask yourself honestly:
- Do you know how to work out what your claim is worth?
- Do you know how to present your claim to your employer’s insurer?
- Do you understand the procedure involved in pursuing an employer’s liability claim?
Your honest answer to these questions will probably be that you don’t.
Some people try to pursue their own compensation claims because they want to save on paying fees to a solicitor, even the success fee (the deduction from your compensation of up to 25%) in No Win, No Fee arrangements.
Our advice is that It is rarely worth the risk. Without legal training and the experience of having dealt with many accidents at work claims previously, you are highly likely to come unstuck. You only get one shot at recovering compensation, and if your claim comes unstuck through trying to do it yourself, there’s no comeback for you.
Here’s what we would advise:
- Find an experienced accident at work solicitor to deal with your claim. Ideally, you want a solicitor who specialises in personal injury claims and has a history of pursuing hundreds of workplace accident claims for claimants. Check out the service that we at Mooneerams can offer you if you need the services of an accident at work compensation solicitor here.
- Most experienced accident at work solicitors will provide a free assessment of whether they believe you have reasonable prospects of pursuing a successful accident at work claim.
We at Mooneerams certainly do that. Call us on 029 2048 3615 if you’d like to talk to us about a possible accident at work claim.
Don’t be tempted to use a claims management company to act for you. They are, in effect, marketing companies. They’ll take your claim details and pass them on to a firm of solicitors on their ‘panel’, chosen because they pay a recommendation fee to the claims company for your claim, not necessarily because they have expertise in accident at work claims. We’d strongly advise you to avoid claims companies.