No you do not, especially if they take a cut of your damages and place you with a firm on the other side of the country. Unless of course you are happy with that arrangement.
If you are thinking about using one of these firms then do ask if your case will be assigned to a litigation manager or other title used to disguise the person handling your case has no legal qualification at all. If your happy then fine after all its your choice.
We regularly get these claims management companies contacting us inviting us to join their panel. If you are one of those companies reading this blog then in short – no thank you.
One firm used a case in the media we had won and linked it to their “contact form” . They made it look like they were the ones that won the case and worse named the child and topped it off by linking the name of the solicitor here at Lee Solicitors to their site. We were unhappy (to state it mildly) and ask if they are so good why do they need to put cases on their site in which they have no involvement ? We invited them to remove the entry and to do so within 48 hours or we were intending to roll our selves up and get stuck in. The entry went off line very sharpish!
We sometimes do a bit of detective work (we are good at that here as one of the team used to investigate claims for a living). We found one “firm” was actually far from what it purported to be . Do not get us wrong there are some very reputable ones out there and some are run by solicitors whom thought “cannot beat them join them”. Thats one way of doing business.
We recently were asked to represent a law firm in the midlands that had a big dispute with one of the shall we say more suspect claims management companies. No sooner did litigation get going seeking substantial damages for breach of contract than on the fax came a notice of a creditors meeting. They had decided to declare insolvancy…….
So really whom you use is your choice. You can use a claims management company. You may have to pay them a cut from yout damages for doing little except passing your case on for a fee paid by the lawyers whom are on their panel. But if you do , ask them how much they get for your case and then make certain they will be around when you want to complain……….
