Welcome to Francis Wilks & Jones. Our team are experts in the different ways to fund a claim. Contact us today and we can find the right funding solution for you.
A fixed fee arrangement is an alternative to the standard hourly rate used by solicitors with a fixed price for each stage of legal work. It is not dictated by the time spent. This gives certainty of legal cost enables you to budget for your lawyer’s fees.
Some solicitors instructed on a general time cost basis lose control or forget that clients are paying for every minute of the solicitor’s time, whether that is time spent reviewing huge volumes of documents, time spent on phone calls or in drafting large letters or complex documentation.
Where cases have the potential to become time consuming and lengthy, it can be preferable for the client and his solicitor that a specific sum of money be agreed for a fixed block of work. This is what is meant by a fixed fee arrangement.
Fixed fee agreements are extremely useful
- for the client, as they give an element of certainty to what the client is going to spend on legal costs;
- for the solicitor, it manages the client’s expectation but also limit what the solicitor has agreed to do for the client, which gives both certainty.
However it must be remembered at all times that a law firm, like any other business, have to make a profit from the resources allocated to the client’s work.
Accordingly, a fixed fee will have to be fixed at a rate at least comparable to what income would normally be received (on average across a portfolio of cases) for the same work and, to provide for risk, will normally be higher than the alternative, an estimated fee.
However, in exchange for the potentially higher cost, the client gets certainty of expenditure (which is often worth paying for). If you would like to read more about fixed fees please click here for more information.
At Francis Wilks & Jones we are extremely familiar with fixed fee models and all other types of funding models. We are happy to explore any type of charging structure with clients to see whether alternate funding models might be appropriate to your circumstances.
Please call any member of our commercial litigation team for your consultation now. Alternatively e mail us with your enquiry and we will call you back at a time convenient to you.
