Securing your Future
Our employment team is committed to ensuring that your rights are adhered to, allowing you to live your life outside of work in complete security.
Covering all Bases
Whatever stage of your career you are at, we are here to advise and assist with all your employment matters - from beginning to end.
Simple and Succinct
We assist employers and employees, ensuring that everybody understands even the most complex of employment law matters.
Helping you Feel Secure in the Workplace
Discrimination, harassment and inequality have no place in the workplace, you should feel safe and secure at all times.
We Know Right from Wrong
Our expertise in employment law means that we are able to help and support anybody making an employment related claim.
Employment Solicitors
Damaged Based Fee Agreements (19 July 2010)
Date: 19/07/2010
In the past claimants and their solicitors have successfully funded Employment Tribunal disputes, through contingency fee agreements and no-win- no-fee agreements. On 9th April 2010, the Damages Based Agreement Regulations 2010 came into force, governing the use of contingency fee agreements, which are also to be called damages based agreements (DBA).
In essence, DBAs allows solicitors, in successful Employment Tribunal cases, to take a percentage of their clients’ compensation or settlement monies as their fee. A DBA can build in different such percentages, to reflect the stage that a case concludes, but it is not based on the actual work that is carried out by solicitors. These differ from conditional fee agreements where a successful party’s costs are paid by the losing party, based on an hourly rate plus a percentage uplift - usually with an insurance policy covering the possibility of a costs order being made against a losing party. The latter is not usually used in Employment Tribunal cases, as costs are not normally awarded.
The Regulations set a maximum fee that claimants have to pay to their solicitors at 35% (including VAT) of the sum recovered. However, DBAs can made additional charges for Counsel’s fees and other disbursements. The actual percentages and the level of disbursements are subject to negotiation between the claimants and their solicitors.
The key feature of the Regulations, is in order for a DBA to be enforceable, claimants’ solicitors and the DBAs must explain and provide certain information to the claimants.
At Duncan Lewis, we are of the opinion that the regulations provide clarity to claimants and will allow Employment Tribunal cases to be continued to be successfully funded.