Bold Law

I've been injured at work and its not my fault - how come my legal costs are not paid for by my insurer?

The Workers Compensation and Rehabilitation Act 2003 does not provide for the payment of legal costs (by the insurer) in a workers compensation claim, unless you sustained a permanent impairment of 20% or greater.

Even in a case where you have a 20% whole person impairment, the amount of legal costs that you can recover is fairly limited.

What that means is that the amount of legal costs you have to pay becomes a critical issue in determining how much money you will actually receive in the hand.

The 50% rule is the maximum amount of legal fees that you can be charged by a no-win, no-fee lawyer for personal injury work in Queensland.

If you ring a lawyer and ask for an estimate of your fees and their response is "you will be charged 50% of your compensation" that means your getting charged the maximum amount permitted under the law. The 50% rule works as follows:

• Total lump sum amount of damages (your award of compensation, plus any legal costs you receive).
• Deduct any outlays (medico-legal report and barrister fees) and deduct any government charges (medicare, Centrelink).
• This amount is divided by two and the resulting figure is the amount you could be charged in legal fees.

In a workers compensation case, an example would be $100,000 in compensation plus no legal costs = $100,000 lump sum.

The injured claimant has $5,000 in medico-legal reports to pay and owes medicate $2,500. Those amounts are deducted from the lump sum of $100,000 leaving $92,500.

The $92,500 is then divided by two. This means that, by law, you cannot receive less than $46,250 in the hand and the firm cannot charge more than $46,250.

How can I minimise my legal costs so I don't get charged too much?

In Bold Lawyers opinion, the best way to minimise your legal costs is to agree to a maximum fee at the start of your case, which is set in an actual dollar amount, rather than a percentage.

For most Workers Compensation cases, Bold Lawyers charge a maximum fee of $20,000 plus GST, plus the outlays spent on your case.

The maximum fee model works particularly well if you have been seriously injured or if you are required to take time off now or in the future from your employment.