welcome!

Injurywatch is a media-savvy social justice organisation with two purposes

• Campaigning: operating high profile media and PR campaigns for the rights of victims of harm to receive respect and fair and timely compensation due to them for their injuries.
• Providing practical help: detailed independent and free advice, information, resources, news, contacts and support services to victims to best serve the success of their claim, enabling them to recover all the compensation due to them and cope with their injury or illness

By combining high profile campaigning with active practical support we aim is to make Injurywatch the trusted resource for media information on personal injury, and injurywatch.co.uk the default destination for claimants seeking quality information about their condition or claim.

The site which will go online at injurywatch.co.uk at the end of March is packed with information and optimised for search engines. Its syndication service is already polled by every major news organisation in the UK.

Lawyers can benefit in five ways from Injurywatch.co.uk:

• by joining our panel: you can set alerts on the system to match cases you are interested in, choosing either by type of case or geographic area (or both). We will email you alerts of cases which match your preferences either daily, or as they come in, permitting you to check out cases in detail and choose which ones you wish to take;
• by using injurywatch to initiate and publicise group actions;
• by writing articles, columns and supplying news about personal injury, workplace related disease, clinical negligence and human rights abuses to us, you can increase the profile of your practice and receive respect for the work you have done (all panel members are required to submit a basic profile, but you can add extra pages, images, logos- even create a small site within the site - remotely and from your desk, using a Microsoft Word style of interface and without needing to know any special code);
• by using us as a research resource, either to keep informed, or in some instances to greatly increase the chance of a claim's success: find long lost fellow employees, trace insurers...; and,
• by using us as a distribution channel for your injury-related news and press releases. News is automatically syndicated out to major news services. We can also syndicate filtered news back to you for live updates to your own site.

If you want to supply us with news or otherwise write for us, you will first need to sign into the site. Joining the site provides an enhanced experience by providing access to private information on the site. If you have already joined the site and logged in, you can go straight to our writing for us pages.

checking out cases

set-up

We have no interest in becoming claims managers. Once the client has instructed you, the relationship is directly between you and them. We will provide you with as much information as possible for you to make a decision whether you wish to take on any claim and as much information back to the client for them to discover whether you are right to handle their case.

injurywatch.co.uk exists in two forms - the public pages - which you are looking at now, containing news, events and information, and private pages which are in a separate area of the site to which only panel members are granted access.

• Public pages are fully searchable both within the site and through Google.
• Private pages are securely housed in a separate database and are not searchable or publicly accessible

Private pages are customised to you and generated according to the permissions we have given you and the preferences you set. Only by logging in as a panel member can you see your private pages. Once logged in you can check out cases according to the preferences you set.

preferences

Preferences can be set as to:

• the type of claims you wish to see- for example, "clinical injury" or "military cases" or "holiday claims"
• by area - if for example you want to take slip and trip cases, but only if they are local to you

Depending on the settings in your preferences you could view:

• a list of every case
• a list of cases in your geographic location
• a list of cases in your specialism
• a list of cases in your specialism and close to your geographic location

and numerous other combinations.

You can also set up expert specialisms and advise us of existing group actions (both of which are often the tipping point in the client giving you instructions on their claim).

security

Preferences are set according to user name, not practice wide. We issue one "master user" identity to each practice. This master-user can create (and delete) sub-users, each of which will have their own password and can set their own preferences. Consequently if someone moves on they can be removed and prevented from accessing sensitive information.

It is possible to have one user in a practice who makes a check on claims for everyone and distributes them accordingly around your practice or you can have several users, each with different preferences according to their specialism. How you choose to work is up to you.

information provided

Once your preferences are set, available claims are displayed in a summary list from which more detailed information can be called up.

The information we will provide at this stage is as complete as possible and includes:

• Date of injury/diagnosis of illness
• Place of occurrence (eg work, street, shop)
• Identity of probable primary defendant
• Identity of secondary defendant (if applicable)
• Summary of nature of injury/illness
• Detailed nature of injury/illness
• Summary description of circumstances
• Detailed description of circumstances
• Claimant group (if applicable)
• Witnesses known y/n
• Emergency services report y/n
• Doctor’s report y/n
• Legal advice already taken y/n
• Insurance position (defendant)
• Insurer (usually in RTA cases)
• Does claimant have legal cover in place (eg BTE or Trade Union)
• Preferred method of dealing with costs
  

The following workflow explains how we deal with claims.

Initial interviews are conducted by trained paralegals who take detailed notes about the claim over the phone. We always call the claimant back as this verifies address details and to some extent the integrity of the claim..

Once notes have been taken (and we have verified the grounds for a claim exist) the claim is listed to be viewable by the panel, who can then offer to take the potential claim. A potential claim will normally be listed for two working days.

The terms on which the claim will be taken can be specified by the solicitor at the time of agreeing to take the claim.

These are relayed back to the client.

Terms might include:

• no risk whatsoever to claimant (no win no fee and solicitor pays ATE premium)
• no win no fee (claimant pays ATE premium. An estimate should be provided what the ATE is)

etc.

You can also include any additional pertinent information regarding the claim: particular expertise in this field, group actions or similar recent cases with successful outcomes, details of the people who will handle the case..

information relayed back to claimant

The claimant is informed of:

• the identity of the solicitors willing to take the claim, and the profile they have logged on the system
• the terms on which they will take it
• the location of the solicitors and the distance from where they live
• any specialism the solicitor has, plus the additional pertinent information outlined above

It is always the client who decides which offer to accept.

Details of any panel member willing to accept the claim will be passed to the client. The system is blind to the level of any referral fee you may pay us. (see fees - below)

Once the client has made a decision full contact information will be relayed to the chosen solicitor.

relationship with the client

From the time the client has instructed you, the relationship is a direct one between you and them. Your "client care" letter goes directly to them. We do not seek a percentage of their compensation or of your success fee or resultant costs. When the claim is placed on the list, we make clear if any legal insurance policies are in place and how the costs are proposed to be funded. If the case requires ATE we will advise you of this. Your arrangements from any sale of any ATE are between you, the client and the insurer.

Any referral fee you pay us (see fees - below) are a cost of acquisition and must not be charged on to the client. You must comply with Law Society rules regarding referral fees. We comply fully or exceed the standards set by all Law Society rules on ethics set for solicitors regarding marketing and client acquisition. We do not "cold-call" to recruit clients.

fees

We have a good team in place with a proven track record, but nobody - neither you nor us - knows how successful this will be.So we do not propose to charge huge up-front fees. Similarly, practice sizes vary greatly and a flat rate would be inequitable.

Instead we charge an initial set-up fee of £150 (includes first years' subscription) and an ongoing fee of £100 a year. For this you get a master identity which enables you to create an infinite number of sub identities for your practice.

Your risk on getting involved is thus £150. This is primarily to cover our costs to offer you a full year of technical support. You can cancel if you are not satisfied after a year. There are no penalteies for doing so.

Your set up fee includes:

• master identity (and any number of sub identities)
• access to the system as described above
• ability to create pages within site promoting your services on a specialist, destination, professionally produced, fully maintained website
• ability to create news items, write columns, pontificate on legal issues and otherwise promote your services within the site from your desktop without any need for coding skills
• use of the site as a conduit to getting press releases and important news out to media organisations
• ability to create and access a news filter to constantly update your own website with appropriate news effortlessly (it is possible to tailor this feature to filter out the successes of other solicitors!)
• 0900-1700 unlimited telephone technical support

We also charge ongoing referral fees. These are only payable if you are successful in attracting the claimant to choose you for their case. They are not payable (unless you want to!) if a claimant views the site and contacts you directly.

Referral fees you are willing to pay are set by you, either system wide through your preferences, or on a case-by-case basis. The level of the referral fee offered are not a factor in whether your offer to take the case is presented to the client. Any panel member who offers to take a case will have their offer put forward to the client regardless of the referral fee.

The client will make a decision on the basis of the information you present whether they should offer you their case.

However higher fees enable us to better promote the service.

Injurywatch will never be in the business of auctioning cases, but you should always offer a referral fee which is a fair reflection of the value of the case.

Cumulative and ongoing referral fees can be checked online and will be invoiced on a monthly basis.

Our payment terms are 28 days from date of invoice.

inaccurate and bogus information

We will make every effort to ensure that the information we provide to you is as accurate as possible. However we do not interview clients face-to-face. If you select a claim and it is bogus or of significantly lower quality than how we describe it, no referral fee will be payable

faq

Who are injurywatch?

Injurywatch is part of an ongoing project to publish web information. Legally it is a partnership between former documentary film maker Conrad Murray and Peter Phillips. Conrad Murray edits the information we publish while Peter Phillips, a former trade union activist, is Director of Campaigns. The editorial department is based in the stable-block of a Georgian house in Devon. The campaigns department and customer service is based at Canary Wharf.

We currently employ 4 people in editorial and site production, a commercial manager (me) and two in customer service, both trained paralegals. Everyone has a background in journalism, law or PR.

The customer service department will be expanded according to need to from March. We have built a sophisticated back office which enables various methods of operation, including calls taken by our call centre to be routed to distant addresses and monitor them as though they were in the office. This enables us to recruit very high-quality distant workers and considerably reduces the floor space we need in E14. Our email system tracks incoming mail. Our target response time for incoming email on claims is 30 minutes.

Why isn't the site at injurywatch.co.uk?

This domain is not the home of the site and it is likely you found us because you followed an email link. You will not (yet) find us in Google, but you will from the end of March. The site is particularly optimised for maximum exposure. When it goes live it will be at injurywatch.co.uk.

The site currently exists on a development server. This is not the pristine and super zippy servers we have located in the Docklands so if your experience is slower than you feel it should be, please accept my apologies. It won't be the same when the site is launched.

The site does however represent the site architecture which we will be using. Think of it like a house we have only partially furnished. Some rooms are complete - some only painted. On the discussions pages for example, the furniture is in place but under dust covers; but the search facility (top right) works beautifully and tracks text in real time on any page we create (try it out!).

At the same time, the news pages automatically poll for news that may be of interest and tip off our news desk. In turn, what the news desk write is automatically syndicated out directly to the news queue of all the major news organisation in the country. If you have an announcement to make or a news story to get out regarding personal injury, Injurywatch is a good place to send it. There is information about to do this on our writing for us pages.

How do you expect to recruit claimants?

Injurywatch aims to recruit claimants by the quality of information and service it provides for them. It is essential that we are seen as independent and plain dealing. Thus, as with a newspaper, there are "Chinese Walls" between our editorial/campaigning staff and any commercial activity we undertake. Our campaigns are however important to our commercial success. It is much easier to get publicity on campaigning issues for example, or visitors to a website packed with useful information, than it is for commercial activity or for a website which contains little information save for "no win no fee".

Injurywatch's PR team comprises some of the most media-savvy, well-connected individuals in the business and will quickly put injurywatch.co.uk at the heart of the personal injury and clinical negligence news agenda.

We assiduously work at promoting both the website and the brand by all means possible and are diligent in giving readers a good experience both in editorial and design terms when they arrive. Every page on the site will have quick fill forms, details of our 0800 number and contact information.

How do you ensure you comply with the Referral Code?

A combination of the Law Society and APIL codes form part of our contract with you should you sign up. Compliance also forms part of our staff employment contracts and form part of the disciplinary process. Staff are paid for the time they work and not on a performance model so there is no incentive to break the code to earn more commission. The site details that commissions are paid and we (and you) must disclose the amount to the client if they request the information.

How do you filter claimants?

Every claimant is interviewed by telephone at least once before we list the claim. Importantly we do this by calling them back —even if they have called us. This qualifies the address information and in the course of the call we will aim to qualify the quality of the claim and eliminate obvious time wasters and frauds.

What 'quality' of claimant do you expect?

Generally speaking we would expect the claims to be more serious and complex than a solicitor might encounter in day-to-day work. A minor street injury might send the claimant reaching for the Yellow Pages, whereas a more serious cause of harm might encourage a claimant to undertake more research.

Tell me more about the panels

Every member must be a solicitor - we will not accept claims-handler intermediaries - and a member of the firm must be a member of the appropriate Law Society panel for the type of claims they undertake. APIL membership is not a requirement but is encouraged. We particularly seek to recruit specialists in particular fields. That said, we also need a good geographical distribution. Many of our test claimants stated they wanted an assurance that they were being dealt with by a specialist but with the added reassurance that the solicitor was based in the same geographic region to them, if not necessarily the nearest town. In the more serious or specialist cases, the research showed that distance was irrelevant and that claimants wanted the best solicitor to deal with their claim. Many have thoroughly checked news sources and seemed to know precisely who did what.

Is the panel, first-come first-served?

No, we grade according to:

• the type of solicitors we want based on particular competences and expertise
• location in a geographical region

A solicitor with a particular speciality or perceived as having great competence or a particular expertise in a specialist sector is someone we treasure. We acknowledge there are some practices we particularly wish to have on the panel. And you probably know who you are.

At the same time, many clients with a relatively "common" claim express a preference to find a solicitor "locally" — by which they mean within their region. So there are excellent opportunities for general practices with a quality personal injury or clinical negligence departments (or even a dedicated individual) to obtain quality work.

What is the £150 set-up for?

The £150 is a £50 set up fee and a £100 annual subscription. This mostly covers the cost of providing a dedicated staff member providing telephone technical support, although it's a cheap way of being on the site. If you pay this you could add information about your practice, file news stories and use the syndication service to get press releases out to where you want them and never take a single case. There is information about to do this on our writing for us pages.

How is it that I can set my own referral feel level? Is the system truly "blind" to the level of fee on offer? Could cases really go to someone offering a penny referral fee? General comments on independence.

We originally looked at a system of using a sealed bid for each case and allocating on the basis of the highest payment. This has obvious appeal from a business standpoint but we didn't want to be seen to be "auctioning" cases in any way. There are solid commercial reasons for this:

• The site works because it is seen to be providing independent advice and working entirely to the benefit of the claimant and must, above all, maintain that integrity.
• Our aim is to attract the maximum number of claimants to use the site by building a reputation for objective advice and plain dealing, not by maximising our margin on every individual claim.

Selling a claim to the highest bidder would like Which? accepting a payment to recommend a particular washing machine.

Our research shows that claimants are currently daunted from making any claim because:

• negative PR from insurance companies has suggested claimants are part of a "compensation culture", with all the baggage (shirkers, work shy, fraudulent) they have attached to that phrase
• the PI sector is (justifiably) notorious for being populated by a great many sharks - there is a blurring of the line between the legal profession and claims management companies
• in workplace injury cases, the client faces social pressures which limit a willingness to claim
• in clinical negligence cases, the claimant sees the event as a one-off failing and does not wish to be seen to be acting to the detriment of their local hospital

In short there is a great need for someone to provide a "community" where claimants are given support, advice and encouragement to seek recompense for the harm that they have suffered and independent advice on what to do next.

At what level should I set my referral fees?

Our guess is however that the referral fee each solicitor sets will be changed on a case by case basis. The reason is that there are varying levels of risk in each case. Some cases will be transparent as a shoo in. Others much more complex, but generate more costs.

Solicitors have a good idea if which ball-park the referral fee should be in and most will set their fee appropriately. Ultimately this is to the benefit of the service for it gives us more resources to develop content and promote the site. If there is a problem with solicitors bidding a penny, then we could set a minimum offer although our view is this should be set very low and that client choice should be the overriding factor.

So how do I best advance my chances of "winning" a claim?

The key to winning any claim is by making most appeal to the claimant, either by specialism in their area of claim or by presenting your practice well as an expert in the field of personal injury or clinical negligence.

Methods include:

• ensuring your profile pages are particularly attractive and packed with information
• trumpeting your successes on the site
• submitting articles
• writing a column
• linking everything up

There is information about to do this on our writing for us pages.

In more difficult cases the known expertise of the specialist solicitor will steer the direction in which it goes. In other cases the locality is more important.

Experience suggests the claimant prefers to instruct a local firm (or more likely a "specialist" in a regional one) in"common" cases, but will appoint someone with a recognised national reputation in more complex cases.

However there are a growing number of claimants who regard perceived expertise as more important than proximity in appointing a solicitor to handle their claim. This group are confident in using a call-centre and tracking their case by the web or email. They will choose their solicitor on a national basis and there is unlikely ever to be any face-to-face contact.

What do I do next?

Ask me a question, either by email or phone, and I will send you an application form. Send it back with a cheque (there is no VAT until we hit the threshold). We will send a receipt by return of post.

Lucy Bonham Carter
28th March 2006