We are Queensland’s first and only “no win no fee” personal injury law firm whose only mission is to help you save money on your personal injury legal fees. We help people in Queensland who have been injured in motor vehicle accidents or in the workplace by performing early and intermediate claim work for them. Then, when your claim is ready, we either help you find the right lawyers for you to resolve your personal injury claim, or attempt to resolve it ourselves.

We help you save money on your legal fees in three main ways:

1. We cap our professional legal fees at $2,000 (+GST) for early and intermediate stage claim work that other lawyers could charge up to $10,000 (+GST) or more for . This is includes providing you with all the legal advice that you need, drafting complex documents, talking to insurance companies, and requesting and perusing important documents like medical records.
2. We give you helpful and detailed tips about proactively keeping your legal fees down.
3. In some cases we offer to try to resolve your matter at a much cheaper rate than other law firms offer.

Although the numbers change from claim to claim, total personal injury legal fees are usually around $20,000+ for a motor vehicle accident claim and $30,000+ for a WorkCover claim. For claims that take longer than 2 years, the fees can be $50,000+ or more.

Need more information? – Personal injury legal fees are usually charged by “time billing”. This is where law firms use an hourly rate for certain tasks and then charge for time spent doing the work. Importantly, this work is often charged in indivisible 6-minute blocks or “units”.

For example, a solicitor that takes 1 minute to read an email from you about your injuries would charge a single 6 minute unit for the work (even if it only takes a minute or two). A common perusal rate for a senior lawyer is approximately $600.00 per hour + GST ($60.00 per unit + GST), so your lawyer reading your email can cost around $66.00 per unit.

Lastly, lawyers in Queensland are allowed to charge an “uplift fee”, which is 25% on their professional fees. Whilst a few law firms don’t charge an uplift fee, a lot do. As a result of this, reading your email could be charged at $82.50 per unit (including GST and uplift).

With most personal injury claims taking around 1 – 2 years to resolve, it’s not hard to see how lawyers can bill you tens of thousands of dollars for their work. 

No! Our professional fees are capped at $2,000 (+GST) and charged on a “no win, no fee” basis. This means that our fees are only charged if your claim is successful, and only ever deducted from compensation paid by the relevant insurer at the end of the claim. This way you’re never out of pocket.

No! We’ll either offer to settle your claim at a much cheaper rate than other law firms, or we provide comprehensive claim summaries to the lawyers that finalise your claim so that your claim won’t miss a beat.

Need more information? – there are two main reasons why there is no downside to using Claimwise:

• When we send your claim to your next solicitors, we prepare a comprehensive and detailed claim summary which lets the lawyers know the who, what, when, where, how and why of your claim, as well all the next steps. We make sure we get your feedback on the summary to ensure that you’re happy.
  

• Law firms usually have a lot of employee turnover! Personal injury lawyers are notorious for changing firms or changing to different areas of law. Because personal injury claims can run for 1 to 2 or more years, it’s quite common for injured people to have multiple lawyers running their claim anyway.

For claims worth $20,000 or more, we are very confident that we’ll be able to save you up to $10,000 or more on your legal fees.

For some small claims worth less than $10,000, your savings may be the same as not using Claimwise. In these cases, we often offer to try and resolve your claim ourselves so that you can walk away with more in your hand.

Either way, we’ll always have an open and honest conversation with you about your claim and the value of our service to you.

Need more information? – Due to how expensive legal fees can be, and the effect of the 50/50 rule (which forces lawyers to sometimes write off their legal fees to no more than about 50% of your compensation), there will be some claims where your total legal fees will be so high that, despite us performing the work cheaper, and providing you with tips about keeping your fees down, your “in hand” amount may be the same.

For medium and large-sized personal injury claims ($15,000+) it is highly likely that you will receive more “in-hand” when using us.

Here’s an example –

Say your claim settles for $50,000 (let’s assume that refunds, disbursements and outlays are $0 – see our FAQs for an explanation of this). Your total legal fees would have been $20,000, but you’ve used Claimwise and your total fees are now only $10,000. This means that your lawyers charge you $10,000 in fees, and you get $40,000 – you’ve saved $10,000.

For some small claims, however, (i.e. some claims only worth $5,000 – $20,000), the legal work performed by the lawyers that resolve your matter may mean that your savings with Claimwise are still less than what that law firm is writing off in professional fees due to the 50/50 rule.

Here’s an example –

Say your claim settles for $10,000 (let’s assume that refunds, disbursements and outlays are $0). Your total legal fees would have been $18,000, but you’ve used Claimwise and your total fees are now only $8,000. Although you’ve saved $10,000 on your total legal fees, your lawyers are still entitled to charge you $5,000 ($5,000 being 50% of the $10,000 settlement due to the 50/50 rule).

If you hadn’t used Claimwise, your total legal fees would have been $18,000, but your lawyers would still only bill you $5,000 due to the 50/50 rule. So although we’ve saved you $10,000 on your legal fees, your lawyers would still charge $5,000 either way. That’s why in these type of cases, we’ll usually offer to try and settle your claim so that you can maximise your in-hand amount. 

In short, it depends on the overall value of your claim (see the above FAQ for details).

For claims worth $10,000 or more, we are very confident that we’ll be able to get you more in hand by using our service.

For some claims worth less than $10,000, however, your savings may be the same as not using Claimwise. In these cases, we often offer to try and resolve your claim ourselves so that you can walk away with more in your hand.

Either way, we’ll always have an open and honest conversation with you about your claim and the value of our service to you.