When it comes to making a personal injury claim it stands to reason that you should want the best person for the job to handle your case, and that means choosing a solicitor who has successfully handled many cases that are similar to your own.

You can find out how experienced your solicitor is simply by asking them. Your solicitor will tell you how many injury claims they have handled that are similar to your own and how many of those claims they have won. The overall success of a solicitor is determined by their success rate. The success rate is a percentage. A success rate of 100% means that a solicitor has never lost a case and these injury claim solicitors are the best of the best. However, anything above 70 percent is considered excellent, and to be honest, plenty of solicitors are taking on really challenging cases – so their success rates are naturally a little lower.

It’s important that you also understand a solicitor’s experience. For you see, a solicitor can have a high success rate but they may have only processed a specific type of claim, such as accidents in the workplace. If you have had a road traffic accident then that solicitor is not going to be the best person for the job. Injury specialist solicitors are what you want – the solicitors who specialise in your kind of accident. By choosing such a solicitor, you improve your chances of claim success exponentially and in addition to this, you will maximise your pay-out and there’s a better chance your claim will be processed in weeks, not months.

If a solicitor does not want to discuss their success rate with you, then questions should be asked about their ability to handle your claim. You need to know how many claims your solicitor has won for all the reasons listed above. Any solicitor who is not upfront about their success rate should not be taken on by you. You should only work with the solicitors who you can trust and transparency is the key factor here.

If you have recently discovered that your solicitor has a low success rate mid-claim, then you can change solicitor within the same law firm or a different law firm. Simply have your new solicitor communicate with your old solicitor, and they will agree a ‘binding promise’, stipulating that upon claim success your old solicitor can recover their fees. This, combined with your new solicitor’s fees, cannot legally be over 25% of the claim value. Alternatively, it may be agreed that your old solicitor can recover their costs from the other side.