What does legal assistance cost?

Costs depend on a variety of situations:

Before anybody else admits liability, the legal costs are your responsibility and are paid by you. However, the moment another party acknowledges liability a special arrangement becomes applicable: the liable party is obliged to pay for your (reasonable) extralegal fees, and is often willing to pay your lawyer directly (this can be negotiated by your lawyer).

If you are partly to blame for the accident, you may still have to pay a portion of the fee. -During the negotiating process, it may be necessary to bring only part of a dispute before a judge. The liable party will pay the legal fees in such a case, even if the judge decides against you. However, if the partial dispute is about your liablility, then you are obliged to pay your own legal fees.

If a full court case is necessary, compensation for your extra legal fees does not apply. A full court case is sometimes the only way for a client to pursue his or her rights. If you want to submit your personal injury case to its full extent, we will have to enter into proceedings on the merits of the case. The legal costs of these proceedings are to be paid by you. At the end of the proceedings, the judge decides whether the liable party is obliged to pay for some portion of the counter-party’s legal fees; but there are no fixed tariffs and such payments almost never cover the total costs of the proceedings.

Since January 1, 2014, the Dutch legal system has begun to experiment with allowing contingency fees for litigation in personal injury cases (a no win-no pay system that is clearly defined to prevent unreasonable fees). We can discuss the merits of this option for you when we examine your case.