Are you thinking of exiting a Legal Market? How Recovery First Panel Firms Can Assist
October 8, 2021

 

Recovery First panel firms can realise the full value of your WIP and ensure your clients are looked after

 

Personal injury work is no longer the profit centre it was once, and constant reforms make it harder to justify the risk of working on a no win, no fee model. If you’re considering whether PI is still worth the stress of funding disbursements, paying skilled staff and the risk of not getting paid if the case goes wrong, what are your options?

You could wind down the department and realise the WIP over time, but then you’re paying staff who aren’t fully occupied or engaged in what they’re doing. The best staff will leave, and you could be left with people you don’t need and a few files which are nothing but a headache. Or you could sell the files to another firm, but they will only pay a fraction of the real value of it. It’s quick cash, but it doesn’t represent value for all the investment and effort you’ve put into those files and those clients over the years.

 

How Recovery First helps law firms with their exit strategy

 

Recovery First and its panel of specialist PI solicitors offer a much better solution. You can let your staff move on to pastures new or absorb them into other areas of practice while sending the files to specialist PI legal practices who know exactly how to get them settled to the benefit of your clients and your firm. You won’t be letting your clients down if you ensure they are introduced to firms that can give them all the care and attention you would and who will get their cases settled for them.

 

Our work with Recovery First

 

As a member of the Recovery First panel, my firm has helped several firms realise the full value of their WIP. We teamed up with Recovery First in 2013 and took a tranche of files from a firm which was local to us and wanted to step away from PI as the LASPO reforms to the funding of cases were beginning to bite. They settled what they could and passed the rest to us. These were mostly pre-LASPO matters, and we were able to take over their CFAs to ensure clients and the firm recovered success fees and ATE premiums under their existing CFA arrangements.

Later, in 2014, we took over files on an agency basis from another firm in the South East who also wanted to focus on their other departments without being burdened with the costs of running cases on CFAs and funding huge sums in disbursements. As a firm, we had deliberately geared ourselves up to run fast track matters efficiently and profitably on fixed fees, so we were well placed to take post-LASPO matters and realise the WIP for the donor firm. This also ensures that the clients’ cases are settled within a reasonable time.

Our approach has always been to examine the files straight away to identify those which can be settled quickly, those which need work to get them ready for settling, and those which are likely to take rather longer. We make sure that clients are brought on board and looked after. Then we focus on settling as many cases as we can as quickly as we can to bring in fees for us and the donor firm who get not only their WIP and success fees but also the money they had shelled out on disbursements. Even if you’ve funded medical report fees through an agency, some cases will go beyond the credit terms, so you may have had to pay those, and Court fees can now be a huge drain on a firm’s cash. Getting your disbursement outlay back is a huge benefit quite apart from realising the full value of your WIP, not to mention, of course, no longer having to pay out any more disbursements.

We’ve had a few long-running multi track cases which have taken longer to settle, but these are just part of our team’s normal caseload. Having just a few such cases when you are no longer geared up to run them, and most of your skilled staff have gone, is a very different problem.

 

How panel firms can help you exit a legal market

 

We and other panel member firms can take that burden away from you and realise your investment in those files more rapidly than you can yourself and without you having to continue paying staff and running up disbursements. And you can concentrate on the other areas of your practice which are still profitable.

The legal services industry has faced a multitude of changes and reforms, with more on the way. Recovery First and their panel of solicitors can help any law firm in England and Wales to exit any legal sector. If you would like Recovery First to help your firm exit a legal market, contact them today for a free, confidential discussion.