- Legal Aid – for medical negligence claims for brain injuries around the time of birth
Our cerebral palsy, birth injury and neonatal brain injury lawyers can help eligible clients access Legal Aid funding for their claims.
Legal Aid is only available to those who have suffered a brain injury or serious neurological injury from medical negligence at birth or within the first few weeks of life. The child’s injury must have happened in England or Wales. The parents’ finances are ignored when making the Legal Aid application, but the child will only be eligible if they do not have substantial money of their own.
Legal Aid funding is only available to a child if their claim is handled by a solicitor who has been approved by the Legal Aid Agency as a specialist in cerebral palsy and child brain injury claims.
Generally, no deduction can be made from the child’s compensation for legal costs where the child has Legal Aid funding. This means that parents have the certainty of knowing that their child will receive their full compensation on the successful conclusion of the claim.
Where a brain injured child is eligible for Legal Aid, we believe that it is in the child’s best interests to use Legal Aid funding for their compensation claim.
- No win no fee – conditional fee agreement (also known as CFA)
In accident claims, children’s medical negligence claims arising from other types of injury, or where the brain-injured child is not eligible for Legal Aid, we act for injured clients on a no-win-no-fee basis. No-win-no-fee agreements are formally known as conditional fee agreements or CFAs.
Where a client’s claim is run on a conditional fee agreement basis, unless our client wins their case there are no legal fees (costs) for them to pay. If the claim fails, we are not paid for the time we have spent working on our client’s case. To protect our clients, we ensure that our clients’ CFAs are always supported by after-the-event insurance which covers any liability for disbursements (for example, court and expert fees).
No-win-no-fee agreements help clients fund their legal claims because there is nothing to pay at the outset and no legal bills to pay along the way. There is nothing to pay if the claim fails. If they win, the defendant pays most of the costs, and the client pays nothing until the end of the case.
If an injured child was covered by legal expense insurance at the time that they were injured, their legal expense insurance policy might provide some help with funding their claim. If you are considering bringing a claim for a child you should let us know immediately if you believe you have legal expense insurance.