08. What if I can't afford to pay for a solicitor?

Investigating a claim for clinical negligence can cost many thousands of pounds. If you can't afford to pay for this yourself, there are several ways of getting help with the costs.

Public funding
If you are on a low income, you may be able to get help with the legal costs through the Community Legal Service (CLS). You'll have to show that you have reasonable chance of winning your case and that the possible value of your claim is enough to justify the costs. If the compensation you would receive is likely to be less than £10,000, you are most likely to get help if the issues are straightforward and can be resolved quickly. See 'Further help' for more about the Community Legal Service.

Trade union help
If you are a member of a trade union or similar type of organisation, it may be able to help you with legal costs.

Legal-expenses insurance
You should check your insurance policies, especially your household insurance policy, to see if they include legal-expenses cover for personal injury claims. These policies can provide cover for legal costs up to a set limit. Your insurance company may want you to use one of their solicitors, but you should try to make sure that the solicitor is a member of one of the specialist clinical negligence panels.

'No-win, no-fee' agreements
These agreements, officially called 'conditional-fee agreements', mean that you do not have to pay your solicitor's fees if you don't win your case. However, because clinical negligence claims are often very complicated, most solicitors won't usually enter into a conditional-fee agreement until there is strong evidence that you will win your case.

This means that you may have to pay several thousand pounds to collect evidence before a solicitor will be in position to:

• tell you whether your claim has good chance of success; and
• offer to continue working on your case under a conditional-fee agreement.

It is important to realise that conditional-fee agreement does not protect you from having to pay the other side's legal costs if you lose your case. So, unless you already have insurance, you will almost certainly have to take out insurance to protect you against the risk of having to pay the other side's costs if you lose. This is called 'after-the-event' insurance and it can be expensive.

For more about conditional-fee agreements and legal-expenses insurance, see the Community Legal Service Direct leaflet 'No-win, No-fee Actions'.