Individuals
Whatever the financial means available to you we are dedicated to exploring every possibility to enable you to bring your case.
We are keenly aware that the greatest bar to accessing justice for most people is the prohibitive cost of litigation which entails not only funding your own legal costs but potentially having to pay the costs of the other party if your case does not succeed. The overall costs risk can often run into many tens of thousands of pounds.
If your means are extremely limited then you may be eligible for public funding, more commonly known as Legal Aid. A rough and ready calculator to assess whether you may be eligible for legal can be found here.
We have a contract with the Legal Services Commission to provide legal services to individuals in Public Law which covers the majority of the classes of cases we undertake in the Human Rights Team.
If you are ineligible for Legal Aid and simply unable to afford to pay privately for representation and/or risk being forced to pay potentially for the other parties legal costs then we will investigate other means of covering the costs risk for you.
These can include:
- legal services insurance funding under an existing insurance policy (eg: household insurance) which may cover all of your costs for bringing certain types of cases.
- Trade Union Funding.
- Funding by public interest organisations such as the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
- Conditional Fee Agreements, otherwise known as “no-win, no-fee” where we will not charge you for our fees unless you win your case (when you can expect to recover your costs from the other party).
- After the Event Insurance – which can sometimes be obtained to cover the risk of having to pay the other party’s costs.
The Human Rights team at Leigh Day & Co prides itself as being at the forefront of developments in access to justice and in certain cases we may be able to investigate obtaining an order from the Court protecting you from having to pay the other party’s costs whatever the outcome of your case. Such an arrangement is known as a Protective Costs Order or PCO and Leigh Day & Co has been instrumental in the development of these. A PCO may be available to you if your case:
(a) has considerable wider public importance; or
(b) relates specifically to an environmental issue.
Our lawyers will always investigate with you the funding possibilities available to you and will endeavour to put together a package which enables you to bring your case to Court.
News
For the first time it has been decided that local authorities can owe a duty of care to vulnerable adults as well as to children. Frances Swaine, partner and head of the human rights department at Leigh Day & Co, explains.
The detailed reasoning behind the Court of Appeal's decision to make its first full protective costs order was released this week and will have a significant impact on the ability of public interest cases to be carried through to court. The case was handled by Richard Stein, judicial review expert at Leigh Day & Co.
The Corner House, who campaigns against corruption in international trade, has won an important double victory against the government who agreed to consult them on anti-corruption rules. They were also the first NGO to be granted a protective costs order. They were represented by judicial review expert Richard Stein.