No win, no fee

These are the terms on which we typically act.

No win, no fee

We act for most personal injury clients on a no win, no fee basis. It means we are not paid our professional fees unless your claim succeeds.

The phrase is used loosely across the profession and it does not mean the same thing everywhere. What it covers on your matter, and what it does not, is something we take you through before you sign anything.

Speculative claims and the 50/50 rule

A personal injury claim run on a no win, no fee basis is what the legislation calls a speculative claim. Those claims carry a statutory protection that most people are unaware of.

Section 347 of the Legal Profession Act 2007 (Qld), commonly called the 50/50 rule, caps what a law practice may charge and recover for conducting a speculative personal injury claim. The cap limits claim-related costs to no more than half of what you are entitled to receive under a judgment or settlement, after refunds and disbursements have been deducted from that amount.

It is a ceiling, not a rate.

The rule sets the maximum a firm may lawfully charge. It is not the fee, and it is not a starting point for working one out. A bill that arrives at the cap on a claim that did not warrant it is not compliant simply because it touches the limit.

Before you sign anything

A conditional costs agreement has to be in writing and in plain language. It has to tell you about your right to get independent legal advice on it, and it has to give you a cooling-off period of at least five clear business days.

Those are your rights, not our courtesies. Take the cooling-off period if you want it.

You will also receive costs disclosure setting out what your claim is likely to cost and how that estimate has been reached. If a bill later seems wrong to you, you are entitled to have it assessed.

How we run matters

Most of what slows a legal matter down isn’t law.

It’s the file sitting in an inbox. The letter that took nine days to go out. The update you rang three times to get. None of that is legal work, and a profession that bills by the hour has never had much reason to fix it.

We built this firm the other way round. The administration runs on systems we designed and maintain ourselves. The legal work is done by a lawyer, and it’s the same one for the life of your matter.

You can see your file

You don’t have to ask what’s happening. Our client portal shows you where your matter is up to, what’s been sent, what’s come back, and what happens next, available whenever you want to look, not when someone gets around to telling you.

You don’t have to chase us

You’ll hear from us regularly, whether or not anything has moved.

That sounds minor. It isn’t. Most of the strain of running a claim is silence, and “nothing has changed this fortnight” is still information. It tells you your file hasn’t been forgotten.

You don’t have to come to us

Not everyone with an injury can get into the city, and some of our clients are a long way from one. Video, phone and remote document signing mean a claim can be run start to finish without you leaving home. If you’d rather sit across a desk, our door is open, but it’s your choice, not a requirement.

The systems do the paperwork. A lawyer does the law.

What we’ve automated is administrative: assembling documents, tracking deadlines, making sure things go out when they should and nothing sits waiting on somebody’s desk.

What we haven’t automated is any part of your claim that takes judgement. Whether an offer is worth taking, what an injury has actually cost you, how to put the argument. That’s a person’s work, and it stays that way.

We build our own

Most firms buy software and work the way it tells them to. We build and maintain ours, which means when something about the way we run matters could be better, we change it rather than wait for somebody else to.

This page is general information about how the law works in Queensland. It is not legal advice, it does not take account of your circumstances, and it should not be relied on as a substitute for advice about your own claim.