We’re a Queensland-based “no win no fee” personal injury law firm whose mission is to help you save money on your personal injury legal fees.

Simple as that.

Glad you asked!

Unlike other personal injury law firms in Queensland, we help you save money in two main ways:

1. We do the work cheaper, and charge based on where your claim resolves. Our first tier of work caps our fees for running the first half of your personal injury claim at $2,000 (+GST) where other law firms would typically charge up to $10,000 or more.Then, depending on where we resolve your claim, our next tiers (informally negotiating a settlement to your matter, attending a compulsory settlement conference, or even running the matter to trial) continue our offer to run your claim significantly cheaper than traditional personal injury law firms.
2. There’s no ongoing bill Because we charge in tiers, you don’t have to worry about endlessly racking up expensive legal fees if you need extra advice or support along the way.

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 depending on the work that we perform for you, 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.

For claims worth $10,000 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 $5,000 – $10,000, your savings may be the same as not using Claimwise.

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 ($20,000+) 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. 

For claims worth $10,000 or more, we are confident that we’ll be able to get you more money “in hand” than if you didn’t use us.

For some claims worth less than $10,000, your in-hand amount may be the same as using any personal injury law firm because the value of your claim, even with our reduced prices, is simply too low.

Here’s an example –

Say your claim settles through informal negotiations for $5,000 (let’s assume that refunds, disbursements and outlays are $0). Our legal fees are $4,000 for that work. Although other law firms would typically charge $15,000 – $25,000 for the same work, your legal fees to either us or another firm would still be capped at $2,500 (being 50% of the $5,000 settlement due to the 50/50 rule).

Either way, we’ll always have an open and honest conversation with you about your claim and our ability to help.