header-logo header-logo

Contingency matters

11 March 2010 / Kerry Underwood
Issue: 7408 / Categories: Features , Damages , Commercial
printer mail-detail

Kerry Underwood welcomes the first steps to full contingency fees

Contingency fee agreements are prohibited in any issued case in the High Court or County Court in England and Wales, but this may be about to change, as a result of the Jackson Report.

“Contingency fee” is used to describe an agreement by which the client’s lawyer is only paid if the claim is successful and is then paid out of damages received, usually as a percentage of those damages, the percentage being fixed in advance of the claim being made. Pure conditional fee agreements are a form of contingency fee in that the client’s obligation to pay is contingent upon winning but that extra fee is a percentage uplift on costs and is unrelated to damages.

Success fees conditional

No win, lower fee conditional fee agreements, increasingly used in commercial cases, are a strange hybrid where, as the name suggests, the solicitor gets a higher hourly rate for winning, but still gets paid in the event of defeat, albeit a lower fee.

If you are not a subscriber, subscribe now to read this content
If you are already a subscriber sign in
...or Register for two weeks' free access to subscriber content

MOVERS & SHAKERS

DWF—19 appointments

DWF—19 appointments

Belfast team bolstered by three senior hires and 16 further appointments

Cadwalader—Andro Atlaga

Cadwalader—Andro Atlaga

Firm strengthens leveraged finance team with London partner hire

Knights—Ella Dodgson & Rebecca Laffan

Knights—Ella Dodgson & Rebecca Laffan

Double hire marks launch of family team in Leeds

NEWS
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
Bea Rossetto of the National Pro Bono Centre makes the case for ‘General Practice Pro Bono’—using core legal skills to deliver life-changing support, without the need for niche expertise—in this week's NLJ
In this week's NLJ, Steven Ball of Red Lion Chambers unpacks how advances in forensic science finally unmasked Ryland Headley, jailed in 2025 for the 1967 rape and murder of 75-year-old Louisa Dunne. Preserved swabs and palm prints lay dormant for decades until DNA-17 profiling produced a billion-to-one match
Small law firms want to embrace technology but feel lost in a maze of jargon, costs and compliance fears, writes Aisling O’Connell of the Solicitors Regulation Authority in this week's NLJ
Charlie Mercer and Astrid Gillam of Stewarts crunch the numbers on civil fraud claims in the English courts, in this week's NLJ. New data shows civil fraud claims rising steadily since 2014, with the King’s Bench Division overtaking the Commercial Court as the forum of choice for lower-value disputes
back-to-top-scroll