At first glance, the concept of ‘referral schemes’ might sound quite distant and somewhat blurry to the everyday reader.
I can assure you, however, that it is one that both you and I are quite familiar with.
For one, you have undoubtedly been, at some point, bombarded with text messages advising you that you could be owed £ 5, 649.43 in compensation for the injury that you had sustained in the accident which you had been involved in.
The case quite often is that you have not really suffered an injury as you have never been involved in the said accident but that is a topic of another discussion.
Further to the above, I am quite certain that most of you have seen the advertisement on the television whereas a guy in a suit bumps into someone, turns around, says sorry and then turns to the camera and says:
‘Sometimes sorry makes it all ok. But we are here for you when sorry is not enough.’
The people in the two examples above often claim that they are ‘specialists able to assist you with your Personal Injury claim and obtaining the compensation which YOU deserve’.
In most cases, alas, they are not really legal professionals or people with any real legal knowledge, for that matter.
Rather, they are most commonly based in call centres and their main duty is to pass you through to an actual law firm so that you can be properly advised.
The abovementioned, then, begs the question:
Are referrers beneficial or detrimental to clients and their overall access to justice?
The answer, of course, is not that simple. There are two types of referrers: those who ‘cold- call’/ text clients after the clients had ticked a box online to say that they had been injured and those who actively market their service on the television/ online and aim to convince clients to call them up themselves.
The former, as you can probably imagine, is found to be a lot more annoying and unhelpful by clients, at least initially. The main reason for that is that not everyone remembers what boxes he had ticked whilst browsing the internet. That is to say, a call from such a referrer is often an unexpected and somewhat unpleasant for the client experience.
The latter, on other hand, is seen by most clients as being quite helpful and professional. The main reason for that, of course, is the very fact that it is the clients who phone up the referrer advising that they have been involved in an accident.
One is, then, left with the impression that the former type is obsolete and not customer- services orientated.
Nevertheless, flipping the coin to its other side, one could argue that some of the clients which are contacted by the former type of referrers were not aware that they were entitled to compensation in the first place. A reason might be that most people will rarely ever deem ‘discomfort and whiplash’ as something worth claiming for’.
The legal stance is, however, that anyone who had experienced pain and suffering through a fault of someone’s else is entitled to compensation which aims to put him back into a position in which he would have been had the accident not occurred.
In the light of the above we could argue that both types of referrers are quite beneficial to clients, especially those who are not familiar with their rights.
Ergo, both types of referrals considerably widen the ambit of client’s access to justice.
As at April 2013, however, with LASPO coming into force, the former type of referral schemes will cease to exist, at least in its current form by making such agreements between null and unenforceable (see ss. 56- 60 LASPO 2012, < http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/10/part/2/crossheading/referral-fees/enacted >.
The above brief discussion is not, of course, a detailed assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of referral schemes.
What it is, however, is but another piece of evidence proving that the LASPO Act, in its current form, is an insult to the English legal system which blatantly and unjustifiably restricts client’s access to justice.
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