Big changes in UK personal injury market
As the saying goes, there is always a bull market somewhere, whether times are good or bad.
In these difficult economic times, survival skills come to the fore, and perhaps this goes some way to explain the extraordinary increase in personal injury claims in the UK. It appears that the much heralded compensation culture which many believe exists in the USA has arrived in the UK. Claims are being made at an unprecedented level, perhaps as the population, generally feeling economic stress, seek to find new ways to keep money coming in for survival.
However, if, as seems to be the case, many claims, particularly for whiplash, are in essence, fraud claims, something had to be done, and the English legal system is in the process of tightening up on the whole personal injury “circus”, which involves other practices which are perhaps less than moral such as rampant payment of referral fees, intermediaries pestering huge numbers of the population seeking to encourage them to make any kind of claim, and significant inducements being offered to potential clients by lawyers and others.
The coming clampdown will involve a ban on referral fees (although it remains to be seen how effective this will be), restrictions on legal costs recoverable and other potential steps. The worry with all this is that the genuinely innocent and those who have been injured, perhaps badly, via accident sand injuries that were caused by lack of duty of care.
Some in the personal injury sector are also finding other ways to redress the growing negative perception. Take, for example, Lloyd Green Solicitors. This firm advocates personal injury with social responsibility. Instead of paying referral fees, the firms has linked up with a major national charity. For genuine personal injury cases which the firm takes on on a no win no fee basis that reach the firm via the charity, the buy cheap cialis firm will then make a significant donation back to the charity. This seems to us like a very sensible way of doing business and helping to restore confidence in the integrity of lawyers and the legal system.
