In October 2021, we launched our own law firm to support injured people who face being unrepresented in claims arising from road traffic accidents (RTAs), after the whiplash reforms were introduced in May of the same year.
First4InjuryClaims deals solely with RTA claims. Only a minority (up to 10,000 a year) of enquiries we receive relate to RTAs and these are now handled by the law firm.
The alternative business structure (ABS) is a separate company within the First4Lawyers group with its own management and operations team.
Our marketing efforts will, as always, stay focused on maximising enquiries across medical negligence, EL, PL and OL work for the sole benefit of our panel member firms.
The reforms mean that people with whiplash-type injuries, lasting for up to two years and worth less than £5,000, are not able to recover the cost of using a lawyer from the negligent driver’s insurer.
The difficulties with navigating the online litigant in person portal has proven that many injured people still want professional help.
But with compensation slashed under the reforms, the margins are too small for law firms to carry on in the field unless they can handle huge volumes.
Yet innocent people are still being injured by the negligence of drivers and, even without marketing for them specifically, First4Lawyers’ market presence and marketing around generic injury search terms means that we continue to receive enquiries.
Moreover, it is important to our brand promise to continue offering consumers support.
First4Lawyers has pledged to our member firms that First4InjuryClaims will not handle any other type of injury claim, although in time it could look at similar, fully digitally enabled, high-volume, low-margin work in non-injury areas of legal practice.
It handles RTAs that fall outside the new regime, too, because of the difficulty of picking out many higher-value claims at an early stage.
Find out more information on First4InjuryClaims.
