Claiming compensation: Best practices for filing a personal injury claim

If you’ve been injured, and you weren’t to blame, then you could be entitled to a legal remedy, which often comes in the form of financial compensation. While you might be aware of the general principles at work, the actual process of extracting this compensation can be slightly intimidating, especially to those with no real knowledge of this area of law.

To give your claim the best chance of success, you’ll want to follow a few specific tips, and adhere to ‘best practice’. But what does this look like?

What is a personal injury claim?

If your person has been harmed, then you have suffered a personal injury. In this case, the word ‘personal’ is there to distinguish harm to your person from harm to your property.

This harm needn’t be limited to your physical, tangible, self. Often, the effects of harm are mental. So, you might make a personal injury claim even if the injury suffered is purely psychological.

Types of injury compensation claims

Personal injury claims differ widely from one another. But, for the most part, they fall into a handful of categories.

A road traffic accident is among the most common varieties, along with workplace accidents, and accidents inflicted on the premises of a business (but whose victims are not employed by the business).

The commonness of these various claims means, among other things, that legal professionals can use precedent to determine whether a given claim is likely to succeed, and how much compensation might be extracted. Solicitors can be reasonably confident in these predictions, because there is so much precedent available. As such, this is an area of law where ‘no win, no fee’ claims are very prevalent.

How to claim for compensation?

You’ll want to have as much information as possible on your accident and the circumstances surrounding it. In a road traffic accident, that means the testimony of witnesses and pictures of the road and vehicles. In a workplace accident, that means the contents of the accident log book.

Get in touch with a solicitor and get the legal process in motion as soon as reasonably possible. While you can represent yourself in these instances, the right legal help will almost always justify the outlay. In many cases, as we’ve mentioned, a personal injury solicitor will proceed on a no-win, no-fee arrangement – which means that the financial risk to you is very limited.

The vast majority of personal injury claims will produce an out-of-court settlement. Both sets of solicitors will understand the likely outcome of a court case, and so take steps to avoid it. Moreover, even when the case does arrive at court, it’s rare that the claimant is required to attend in person. As such, you can make a claim without fear of a stressful legal process: this is a very functional area of law where little arguing actually takes place – if the facts of the case are on your side, then so too will the law be.