You explain what has happened. This can be by telephone, home or office visit, by completing our online enquiry form or by talking to our virtual lawyer online. We will tell you if we are prepared to take your case and if not we will explain why and point you in another direction. It’s important that we listen to you and understand. We never lose sight of the fact that you have had a distressing experience. As our clients we are here to advise and support you. This is a journey we travel together.
We will give you our professional view on the prospect of succeeding. Success is never guaranteed but we can give you our opinion and with our experience we are usually right. We will provide you with an estimate of how long we believe your case will take, and then provide you with documents confirming who will be dealing with your case and how we will proceed. We can send you our documentation to consider and sign by post, or on-line by secure document sign up.
We present details of your claim to the responsible party or their insurer. Legal process allows a period of time within which the person or persons at fault, their insurers or solicitors can consider our allegations and then either admit or deny liability. There may be an element of argument involved but at this stage the response is usually an admission of fault, a denial of fault or another party is blamed.
If liability is admitted then we will immediately start to build your claim beginning with medical evidence. We have access to a national register of medical experts to guarantee that you are examined by a medical expert close to your home. Law is all about evidence and it is vital to get the best experts to present an opinion and prognosis. Sometimes a single medical report is all that is required and a case can be concluded within a very short period of time. In other circumstances the injuries sustained may be very serious and intervention and rehabilitation may be required before we even begin to compile medical assessments of the nature and extent of injuries sustained. In general the more serious the injury then the longer it will take us to obtain evidence to support all loss. Loss is not just the injury, pain and suffering it may include loss of earnings, loss of pension, damaged clothing and may also require a claim for future loss of earnings and in some cases a claim for disability on the open job market.
The insurers or their solicitors will have denied blame with reasons. We would consider and discuss these reasons with you and determine obtaining witness evidence and / or challenging issues raised. At this stage it is common for us to reply to the at fault party or insurer asking them to reconsider their position. If necessary we will recommend that legal proceedings are threatened and if appropriate, issued. You will be kept up to date at every stage so that you are comfortable with the advice we offer, (even if that advice is that we no longer feel that you have a case which we can support). At this stage we will often invite a barrister to offer an opinion ( on a No Win No Fee basis) as to his or her views on whether your case will succeed. We work with a team of specialist barristers for this purpose. We never use a barrister unless he or she is known to us and by ‘known’ we mean successful.
We only recommend that we go to court (issue legal proceedings) on a very small percentage of our cases if we believe the third party is being unreasonable (and an even smaller percentage of those ever proceed to a hearing in front of a Judge). This may be not accepting fault or in not being prepared to pay what we believe your compensation should be.
We deliver the result which we feel is right for you. The overwhelming majority of compensation claims never go before a Court of Law but if that’s what is necessary the Smooth Law will ensure that your matter proceeds with all vigour to conclusion.
