Our aims

Our aims are to recover compensation for victims of diseases or accidents. We will also act for victims of medical accidents or professional negligence.

We do not do any other sort of work.

Unlike many other solicitors, we will not work for those who are responsible for the accidents or diseases, or their insurers. We believe this would damage the interests of our clients.

We guarantee that every client will have their case dealt with by a specialist solicitor, who has chosen a career in compensation work for injured people.

All of our cases, however small, are dealt with by qualified solicitors, who handle only compensation claims for victims of injury or disease. We put a great value on speed in completing cases. Delay often spells disaster. We start court actions early in those cases we think will succeed in court, and get them to trial as quickly as possible. This approach produces the greatest amount of compensation for our clients. We avoid legal jargon. Our letters to clients are written in plain English.

Quality checks

We are committed to legal aid, and have a Legal Aid Franchise. This means that the Legal Services Commission has looked carefully at the way we do the work and the way our firm is organised, and have approved us. It means they trust us to do your case properly.

We belong to the Law Society's Personal Injury Panel. This means that the Law Society has also looked at the way we do cases for clients, and the way our firm is organised, and we passed their test. Only solicitors with a certain level of expertise and experience can belong to this panel. All three of our offices are accredited by APIL (see News item: Association of Personal Injury Lawyers Accreditation).

We feature in the Legal 500 and Chambers law guides, which recommend us in the type of work we do. We know many doctors and technical experts in the field of industrial disease and injury generally. We have an up to date register of experts. We have collected a mass of information which is used to help our clients. We are accredited by organisations such as Occupational and Environmental Diseases Association (OEDA).

We are on the recommended list of solicitors for Asbestos Support Groups nationwide.

Our clients

Our clients are either trade union members or individuals who instruct us on the recommendation of others, or off their own bat. We act for victims of injury or industrial disease in all parts of this country. We act for people in other countries if they have a case which can be brought in this country. We have clients in Australia, Canada, South Africa, the USA, Malta, New Zealand, Spain and other countries. We represented 2200 South African asbestos disease victims in the largest group action ever brought in this country for asbestos disease.

Our charges

Most of the claims we do are successful. This means the other side, and not you, pays the cost of bringing the claim. Whilst fighting cases forcefully, we avoid spending money on cases without justification, and will try to do the cases in the most economical way for our clients. Our experience suggests that the fastest way is usually the cheapest way.

You will get a free initial interview. If necessary, a solicitor will see you at home. We then tell you whether you have a good case, and how to pay for it. Although we are in the North of England (Manchester, Liverpool and Halifax), we see clients at home throughout the country regularly.

Most cases we take on are won or settled with compensation for our clients. When this happens, the other side pays all or most of the cost of bringing the claim.

Funding

Legal aid has been abolished except for group actions or very high cost cases. We will get legal aid for you if possible. We will advise you if you qualify for legal aid. Unless you are on Income Support, you will probably have to pay something towards the cost of your case. This money is paid monthly to the Legal Aid Board once you have been given legal aid until the end of your case. If you win your case, once our charges have been paid by the other side, you will get back most or all of the money you have paid to the Legal Aid Board.

Ask us, or any solicitor you consult, what you are likely to have to pay, bottom line. The solicitor should be able to quote you a figure. If you think it is too much, ring another solicitor for a quote.

Most cases we take on are successful, and most of our clients receive their compensation in full. Most of the time, we recover all of our charges and expenses from the other side and not from our clients.

There are now two main ways of bringing a case: legal expenses insurance, or a conditional fee agreement (“no win no fee”). We will discuss all possible ways of funding a case with you.

If you already have legal expenses insurance, we will find out whether it covers you for this case. If we think you have a good case, and you want us to do the case, we will ask your legal expenses insurers to agree that we do the case for you. Sometimes, legal expenses insurers will not allow you to choose your own solicitor. If this happens, we can still do the case for you using a conditional fee agreement.

This explanation of conditional fee agreements in this compensation guide is in general terms. It is not part of the terms of our conditional fee agreements with our clients.

Under a Conditional Fee Agreement, your solicitors do not charge you for the work if you lose or have to give up your case on legal advice. Your solicitor gets paid by the other side on your behalf if you win. This is the meaning of "no win, no fee."

If you win or settle your case, you are responsible for your own solicitor's charges and expenses. If you were not responsible for them, your solicitor could not get them from the other side. But if you win or settle your case, your solicitor gets most and frequently all of the charges and expenses back from the other side on top of your compensation, so you do not end up paying your solicitor.

Before starting a court action, your solicitor arranges insurance for you, which protects you from the cost of giving up or losing the case. If your case is successful, you should get all or most of this insurance premium back from your opponent at the end of the case. If you lose or give up the case on legal advice, you will be ordered to pay the other side's legal charges, but you will not have to pay, because you will be covered by the insurance policy. The insurance policy also covers money spent on your behalf on court fees, medical or other expert opinions, and all other money paid to others during the case.

After signing a conditional fee agreement, your solicitor takes the risk of losing the case and not getting paid. If you lose or have to give up the case on legal advice, you are not liable to pay your solicitor for the work done under the conditional fee agreement. In return for taking the risk of losing the case and not being paid, your solicitor may charge your opponents a success fee at the end, if you win or settle the case. The success fee is a percentage increase on the solicitor's hourly rate. Your solicitor will tell you what the success fee is. Your employer's insurance company will have to pay this, so long as your solicitor can show them that it was a reasonable success fee for taking the risk.
Group action
A group or Multi-Party Action is where a number of people who have suffered injury or disease in the same or similar circumstances come together to bring one action.

John Pickering and Partners LLP is one of a very few specialist firms on the Legal Service Commission Multi-Party Action Panel. Firms on this panel are allowed to do this type of work with the benefit of legal aid. It is very difficult to do this type of case without legal aid.

We are on the Multi-Party Action Panel because we have a track record of successful actions brought for groups of industrial disease clients, ranging from vibration white finger to asthma and asbestos disease.

We acted for over 2000 South African claimants in an asbestos group action against a multi-national company. In July 2000, the House of Lords allowed this case to go ahead in England. The potential responsibility of a parent company for the actions of its overseas subsidiaries is one of the most important and interesting areas of law to have developed recently.