Key takeaways
- No win, no fee means nothing to pay up front, and no professional fees at all if your claim is unsuccessful.
- Your total legal costs are made of three things: professional fees for the work done, disbursements paid to third parties, and GST.
- Our uplift is 25% — and that is 25% of our professional fees, not 25% of your compensation.
- A lawyer taking a percentage of your compensation is charging a contingency fee, which is unlawful in Victoria outside court-approved class actions.
- We quote fixed-price packages in writing before you sign, rather than running an open meter.
Most people who have been injured do not call a lawyer straight away. They wait, and the reason is almost always the same. They are worried about the bill.
It is a reasonable worry. You are already out of pocket, possibly off work, and the last thing you need is a legal bill you cannot pay. So no win, no fee sounds like the answer.
It is a genuinely good arrangement, and it is the reason most Victorians can afford to run an injury claim at all. But the phrase is doing a lot of work, and it does not mean what most people assume.
Here is the whole picture, including the parts most firms would rather you asked about later.
What no win, no fee actually is
The formal name is a conditional costs agreement. It is a contract that says our professional fees only become payable if your claim succeeds.
If your claim does not succeed, you do not pay us for our time.
That is a real protection and it removes the largest financial risk of running a claim. But notice what it covers: our fees for our own work. There are other costs in a legal claim, and how those are treated depends on the kind of claim you are making.
The Victorian Legal Services Board, which regulates lawyers in this state, puts it plainly on its own consumer page: no win, no fee does not mean there is nothing to pay if you lose.
What your total legal costs are made of
Three things: professional fees for the work we do, disbursements paid to third parties so your claim can run, and GST.
Professional fees, and the uplift
Because a firm running your claim conditionally carries the risk of doing potentially many years of work and being paid nothing, Victorian law allows an uplift fee on a successful outcome. It is sometimes called a success fee.
Our uplift is 25%.
25% of what? It is 25% of our professional fees, not of your compensation. If our professional fees were $20,000, the uplift is $5,000. It is not a share of your payout.
While we are here: a lawyer taking a percentage of your compensation is called a contingency fee, and it is illegal in Victoria in litigious matters, with a narrow exception for court-approved class actions. If anyone offers to run your injury claim for a third of your settlement, that is not a competitive offer. It is an unlawful one.
Disbursements, and how they are funded
Disbursements are the real expenses of running a claim: medical and specialist reports, barristers fees, filing fees, records from hospitals and employers.
These are payments to other people, and someone has to fund them while the claim runs. You have two options with us. You can pay them yourself as they arise, which costs the least overall. Or you can use our disbursement funding provider, where we arrange it, you sign nothing extra, and the funder covers expenses as they are incurred. Interest accrues daily at 16% per annum, is added to the balance monthly, and is repaid from your settlement.
That rate is not trivial and we would rather you saw it here than discovered it at settlement. If you can fund disbursements yourself, you will keep more of your compensation. If you cannot, the funding is what makes the claim possible at all, and that is the trade.
Whether you owe disbursements if your claim fails depends on the type of claim. In some of our matter types you do not owe them at all. It is set out in the relevant agreement, and in the matter-specific guides below.
What counts as winning
This is the clause people skip and later regret.
Every conditional costs agreement has to define a successful outcome, and it is usually broader than money arriving in your account. Depending on the claim, it can include being awarded a certificate that lets your claim proceed, or the other side being ordered to contribute to your costs.
You can therefore win for costs purposes at a point that does not feel like winning yet. That is normal across the industry. Read the clause in any agreement you are asked to sign, ours included, and ask what it means in your matter.
You should also know that a lawyer can generally charge you if you end the agreement partway through, or move to another firm before the claim concludes. That does not make you a captive, and changing lawyers is sometimes the right decision, but it is not always free.
What the other side pays, and the gap
Here is the part that improves the arithmetic, in most claims.
In many personal injury matters the other side contributes towards your legal costs. That contribution is partial, not complete. The difference between your total costs and what is recovered is called the gap, or solicitor/client costs, and that is what comes out of your compensation.
How much is recovered varies enormously by claim type. In some it covers a solid share. In superannuation TPD claims there is usually no recovery at all, because there is no other party ordered to pay. That single difference changes the economics completely.
Fixed-price packages, not an open meter
This is where we differ from most firms, and it is the part we would like you to compare.
Rather than an open-ended hourly estimate that grows as your matter does, we quote a fixed-price package for the stage your claim is at. Each package sets out professional fees, disbursements, what we anticipate recovering from the other side, and your likely gap payment.
You get those numbers before you sign anything, not in a bill two years later.
We cannot tell you what your claim is worth before we have seen it. But we can tell you what it costs to run, and you are entitled to know that at the start.
Costs by claim type
The mechanics above are the same everywhere. The numbers, the stages and the risk if you lose are not. Our detailed guide sets out the packages and what you would actually pay:
- What a WorkCover claim costs. No-fault disputes start small, serious injury claims are a different scale.
Guides for TAC and superannuation TPD claims are in preparation. In the meantime, ask us and we will give you the figures for your matter type.
Your rights, whoever you instruct
Under Victorian law, your costs agreement must be in writing and signed, and you have the right to:
- Discuss and negotiate the agreement before signing
- Get independent legal advice before you sign
- Cancel within five business days, the cooling off period
- End the agreement at any time by written notice, noting that after the cooling off period you may owe costs even if you do not win
- Ask us to negotiate costs with any barrister we brief for you
- Receive an itemised bill at no extra cost, if you ask within 30 days
- Take a costs dispute to the Victorian Legal Services Board and Commissioner
Questions worth asking any firm
- What is your uplift fee, as a percentage?
- What do you estimate disbursements will be in a claim like mine?
- Do you use a disbursement funder, and what interest does it charge?
- If my claim is unsuccessful, what will I owe, at worst?
- What does your agreement define as a win?
- How much of my costs is the other side likely to pay?
- What happens to my costs if I change lawyers?
Any firm worth instructing will answer all seven without hesitation. If you get vagueness on the ones about money, that tells you something.
Where we stand
We run personal injury claims on a no win, no fee basis, and we would rather set out the full picture at the start, including the uncomfortable parts, than have you discover them at settlement.
If you want to know what a claim in your circumstances is likely to involve, the free claim check takes a couple of minutes and costs nothing.
We handle WorkCover and workplace injury claims, TAC and road accident claims and superannuation TPD claims across Victoria.
This article is general information about how legal costs work in Victoria. It is not legal advice about your circumstances, and the figures described are ours rather than the industry’s. For advice on your own claim, speak to a lawyer.
