Can I change lawyers during my claim?

Changing Lawyers

In most personal injury matters, you would have signed a No win-No fee costs agreement or what is known as a Conditional Costs Agreement. This means that you do not pay any legal costs until the conclusion of your claim. If you have signed a no win-no fee costs agreement, then there is usually no difficulty in changing to another Lawyer.

In order to change lawyers you will need to:

• Find another Lawyer to take over conduct of your claim;
• Sign a document authorising your new Lawyer to take over conduct of the claim from your old lawyers.

Once your old Lawyer receive that authority, you are no longer their client and they are not entitled to contact you, other than to send a bill of costs for work completed to date.

What happens next?

The old Lawyers should then forward the file to your new Lawyers on the undertaking that the old lawyers’ reasonable costs and disbursements will be paid at the end of the claim.

Often a Tripartite Deed is entered between the old Lawyers, new Lawyers, and the client to ensure that reasonable costs and disbursements will be paid to the old Lawyers at the conclusion of the claim.

Sometimes difficulties can arise where the old Lawyers refuse to release their file until the disbursements are repaid such as the cost of medical reports. In No win-No fee costs agreements most of the time you do not need to repay the disbursements until the conclusion of the claim.

We recommend an Accredited Specialist when choosing a Lawyer

Changing Lawyers is a relatively simple process. You do not need to repay any legal costs until the end of your claim. If you have lost confidence in your lawyers, then you should obtain a second opinion from a different Lawyer.

We always recommend that any Lawyer you chose to act on your behalf in a claim for personal injury should be a NSW Accredited Specialist in personal injury law.

Please see our article here on why you need an Accredited Specialist.