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A personal injury solicitor can only assist you make a claim to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) in the UK if you have been injured as the result of a crime. This can be directly such as physical abuse, sexual abuse, rape and other types of assault where the intent was to harm you, or indirectly such as being struck by an assailant fleeing the scene of a crime. Whether the injuries inflicted on you were intentional or accidental is not important in regards to criminal injury claims as long as those injuries were the result of a crime within the UK, you cannot be compensated for crimes that occurred outside this country.
You should be aware that you do not have to use a solicitor to pursue a claim to be compensated by the criminal injury compensation board. If you visit their site at www.cica.gov.uk you can download the forms and fill them in yourself. You will be assigned a case worker who will gather the relevant information for your case and who will tell you what you need to do at each step. Bear in mind that the C.I.C.A. has been set up to compensate you, unlike insurers whose job it is to fight claims against it, so putting your trust in one of their representatives should not create a conflict of interests. Of course, as the UK's criminal compensation board do not have to pay legal fees they do not feel pressure to settle claims rather than investigate them so your allegations and injuries will be investigated fully before any compensatory amounts are paid out.
You will need several things to have occurred prior to making a claim and certain pieces of evidence. Normally the criminal injury compensation authority will require that the person being accused of committing the violent act against you has been prosecuted. The crime in question does not always have to have resulted in a conviction or jail time but it does help your case if the evidence available to the prosecutor is already sufficient as to obtain that conviction. You will need documentation of your injuries also whether you attended hospital or you local G.P. does not matter, as long as a medical professional has officially documented your injuries there should be no issues.
So are there any benefits to using a solicitor to run your criminal injury claim? In many instances, yes, but first you need to shop around for the best mix of experience and cost. You probably don't want a top quality solicitor that takes 30% of your compensation but you also wouldn't want an in-experienced solicitor that takes just 10%. A mix of experience and an acceptable conditional fee rate is what you should aim for so make sure and call a few firms before signing anything. All solicitors, whether in Scotland, England or Wales, should offer you a no win, no fee arrangement on your case. The no win no fee means that should your case lose you will not have to pay the solicitor's legal fees. Such is rare because a solicitor will generally not invest their time in a criminal injury case unless they are very sure that they can obtain the compensation for you as their fees are limited by the outcome.
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