Lower recovery for Claimants under the new 'no win no fee' legislation?

Successful Claimants who enter into Conditional Fee Agreements (known as CFAs) from April 2013 will no longer be able to recover success fees from a losing defendant.  Instead, a new form of contingency fee agreement called a Damages Based Agreement (DBA) will be introduced. DBAs will provide for Claimant lawyers to be paid only if the claim succeeds, and whilst basic costs would still be recoverable from a losing Defendant, the success fee will be calculated as a percentage of the Claimant's damages award. Draft Regulations have finally been published setting out the proposed details of the DBAs.The new legislation can be found here.

Since the effect of this change will be to reduce the amount of damages a Claimant recovers, if you have litigation pending which you wish to run on a 'no win no fee basis', you may wish to consider entering into a CFA as a matter of urgency.