Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA)

A Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA) or No Win, No Fee Agreement is an agreement which usually provides for our fees and expenses, or any part of them, to be paid only if you are successful in your claim and receive compensation.  It is a written agreement that is legally binding and contains a detailed explanation of all the terms of the agreement.

Before agreeing to undertake any work on a CFA basis we will need to assess the viability of a case and its merits. This assessment will take up to 2 weeks There will be associated fees payable by you for the assessment.

If we do not succeed in winning your case, you do not pay us anything providing you have complied with your responsibilities. These responsibilities include the following:

• Provide us with reasonable instructions
• Not deliberately mislead us or any experts and give them false information
• Not instruct other legal representatives at the same time
• Follow our reasonable advise in respect of your claim
• Not settle your claim directly with your opponent
• Not ask us to act in an improper or unprofessional way
• Authorise us to disclose to the Court or others all relevant information in respect of the claim and the recovery of costs
• Co-operate with us in recovering legal costs from your opponent.

If you lose, you may be liable to pay some or all of your opponent’s costs.  However, you will normally have the benefit of Qualified One-Way Cost Shifting so the court will not usually enforce an order for costs against you, unless:

• the proceedings have been struck out; or
• the claim is fundamentally dishonest; or
• the claim includes a claim for the financial benefit of someone else.