Not Paid For Medico Legal Reports?

The Problem

Has this happened to you? You accept instructions from solicitors. Your report is not supportive of the claimant’s case, and despite your T&C’s, they refuse to pay.

The reasons are unclear. The inference is you should assume the litigation risk of the claimant and the Solicitors. In any event, the Solicitor will not earn fees from the case, and he will not ask the client to pay your fee, so the upshot is you are not to be paid.

The choice is stark, you either write the fee off or you sue the Solicitors. The fee is within the Small Claims Court Limit, so you commence a recovery claim yourself.

The Shenanigans

The Solicitors make life as difficult as possible for you, you might say you are given the run around. They allege you have issued proceedings against the wrong legal entity. They say you are at risk for an extensive claim for Court appearance expenses (recognising that legal costs are not recoverable on either side) which significantly exceed the fees you seek to recover.

They will not compromise and refuse to consider a resolution without a trial. They appoint a barrister to represent them, while you attend/ deal with the correspondence etc on your own. They wriggle at every point in the process…

The Outcome

You arrive at Court, and you are ready to go with your arguments before the master. The barrister appointed by the Solicitors approaches you in the corridor and you are paid. 

We have helped several clients through this process. The difficult part is trying to identify which Solicitors might behave like this before you go through all of this…