How the legal system works

[andrewducker]

Comments

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

To be pedantic, "How the legal system works in countries with class-action lawsuits and contingency fee billing".

Class-action lawsuit: where you're allowed to sue on behalf of a huge group of people, for all of them.

Contingency fee: where the lawyer takes a percentage of the damages awarded, rather than a gradated fee.

Neither is allowed in either England or (AFAIK) Scotland, because, well, neither country has decided to makes its legal system stupid in that particular way.

[andrewducker]

I know we don't have class-action suits - but I thought there had been situations over here where people had won court cases and the legal fees had then been higher than the costs they got - and because of the "no win, no fee" they were worse off than if they had lost.

[missedith01.livejournal.com]

That should be a very rare occurrence. Usually the court will make an order for all costs against the losing party and it will be paid by them or (more often) their insurance company.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Not quite. Usually, if you win a case, you will get about 75-80% of your costs back from the other side. So yes, to answer andrewducker's point, you probably won't get all your costs back, but hopefully your damages will exceed the shortfall. A lawyer ought to make it clear if a prospective lawsuit is likely to end up costing more than it brings in.

What, to be more specific, we don't have is a system where your lawyer gets a percentage of the damages if you win. There are such things as conditional fee agreements, but those involve an uplift (say 50%) above normal-rate fees if you win, and no fee if you lose. (As ever, it's never as simple as that; a so-called 'no-win, no-fee' agreement still involves lots of other expenses you pay along the way.)