No win, no fee explained: how it really works

"No win, no fee" sounds simple, and at heart it is — but the small print is where people get caught out. How much actually comes out of your compensation? What is this "success fee" everyone mentions? And if the phrase really means you pay nothing on losing, who picks up the bill? This guide is the deep dive on UK personal-injury funding, written in plain English, so that before you sign anything you understand exactly what you are agreeing to.

A quick note first: we are an independent information service, not a law firm and not a claims-management company. Nothing here is legal or financial advice about your own claim — for that you'll want an SRA-regulated solicitor who can put the figures in writing. If you're still at the starting line, our how to claim compensation guide covers the bigger picture.

"No win, no fee" means a Conditional Fee Agreement

A Conditional Fee Agreement, or CFA, is a contract between you and your solicitor under which their fee is conditional on the outcome. If the claim succeeds, they get paid; if it fails, they don't charge you for the time they spent on it. CFAs were introduced in the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990 and have been the backbone of personal injury funding ever since legal aid was withdrawn from most injury claims.

The "fee" in a CFA has two layers. The first is the solicitor's basic charges — their hourly work on your case. When you win, these are normally recovered from the losing party (the defendant or, in practice, their insurer), so they don't come out of your pocket. The second layer is the success fee, an uplift on those basic charges that rewards the solicitor for taking the risk of getting nothing. That success fee is what most people are really asking about when they say "what does no win, no fee cost me?"

The success fee and the 25% cap

Before April 2013 the success fee was payable by the losing defendant on top of the basic costs, so a winning claimant kept their full compensation. That changed with the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO), which reshaped how injury claims are funded across England and Wales.

Under the post-LASPO regime, the success fee is no longer recoverable from the loser. Instead it is deducted from the claimant's own damages. To stop that deduction swallowing the award, Parliament capped the success fee at 25% of a defined slice of your compensation in personal injury claims. Crucially, that 25% is calculated on:

• General damages — your compensation for pain, suffering and loss of amenity; and
• Past pecuniary losses — financial losses already incurred up to settlement, such as lost earnings and treatment costs to date.

It expressly excludes damages for future losses — future loss of earnings, the future cost of care, future medical treatment and so on. In a serious injury claim the future-loss element can dwarf everything else, so ring-fencing it from the success fee protects the part of the award meant to support you for years to come. The 25% figure is also a maximum, not a fixed price: a firm can and often does charge less, and the percentage may be staged depending on when the case settles. Our guide to what compensation covers explains the difference between general, past and future damages in more detail.

After-the-Event (ATE) insurance

Even on no-win-no-fee, a losing claimant can face costs — chiefly the other side's expenses and the disbursements spent building the case. After-the-Event (ATE) insurance is a policy taken out after the accident specifically to cover that risk. If the claim fails, the ATE policy pays the bills it covers, which is why a properly insured claimant can genuinely walk away owing nothing.

What does ATE typically cover? Usually the opponent's legal costs if you become liable for them, and your own disbursements — court fees, medical report fees, expert fees and similar. The catch sits in who pays the premium. Before LASPO, the ATE premium was recoverable from the losing defendant. Since LASPO 2012 the premium is generally not recoverable and is borne by the claimant instead, usually out of damages if you win. There is one notable residual exception: in clinical negligence claims, the premium for ATE cover relating to the cost of expert reports on liability and causation remains recoverable from the defendant. That carve-out exists because medical evidence in negligence cases is unusually expensive.

The honest headline, then, is that "you pay nothing if you lose" is broadly true for a properly funded, honest claimant — and "you pay a capped slice if you win" is the trade-off. The precise pounds depend on your CFA terms and any ATE policy, which is why getting them in writing matters so much.

Qualified One-Way Costs Shifting (QOCS)

The usual rule in English litigation is that the loser pays the winner's costs. For personal injury that would make claiming terrifying — lose, and you could owe the defendant tens of thousands. Qualified One-Way Costs Shifting (QOCS), introduced alongside the LASPO reforms, switches off that rule for most injury claimants. In plain terms: if you bring a personal injury claim and lose, you will not normally have to pay the defendant's legal costs.

The protection is qualified, not absolute. It can be lost or limited where, for example, the claim is found to be fundamentally dishonest, the case is struck out as an abuse of process, or the claimant fails to beat a defendant's formal settlement offer (in which case costs protection can be eroded up to the level of damages recovered). For the honest, genuine claimant, though, QOCS is the single biggest reason that bringing a no-win-no-fee claim carries so little downside risk.

Disbursements: the out-of-pocket costs

Separate from your solicitor's fee are disbursements — third-party expenses the case can't run without. The common ones are court issue fees, medical report fees (a doctor must independently examine and report on your injury), and where needed, fees for engineers, accountants or other experts. On a winning claim these are usually recovered from the defendant; any shortfall, plus disbursements on a losing claim, is where your ATE policy earns its keep. A good solicitor will tell you up front which disbursements you might ever be exposed to, and how they are covered.

Damages-Based Agreements (DBA) — the alternative

A CFA is by far the most common funding model, but it isn't the only one. A Damages-Based Agreement (DBA) is a "contingency fee" arrangement: instead of an uplift on hourly charges, the solicitor takes an agreed percentage of the damages you recover and nothing if you lose. In personal injury claims that percentage is capped at 25% of damages (excluding future losses), broadly mirroring the CFA cap. DBAs are less widely used than CFAs because of their stricter rules, but they are a legitimate alternative — and if a solicitor offers one, the same advice applies: get the percentage, the cap and the deductions in writing.

What about legal aid?

Legal aid once funded many injury claims. LASPO 2012 removed it from most personal injury work, which is precisely why CFAs and ATE insurance became the standard. A narrow but important exception survives: legal aid remains available for some clinical negligence claims, notably those involving severe neurological injury to a baby caused during pregnancy, birth or the early post-natal period. For the vast majority of accident claims, however, no win, no fee — not legal aid — is the route you'll be offered.

What "you pay nothing if you lose" really requires of you

The protection of a CFA, ATE cover and QOCS is not unconditional — it assumes you hold up your side of the bargain. Your funding agreement will require you to be honest, to co-operate with your solicitor, to attend medical appointments, to give instructions promptly, and not to do anything that prejudices the claim (for instance, settling behind your solicitor's back). Breach those terms, or be found fundamentally dishonest, and you can lose both your QOCS protection and your no-fee safety net — and become liable for costs you would otherwise never have paid.

"No win, no fee" was never meant to mean "no responsibility." It removes the financial barrier to justice for honest claimants — but honesty and co-operation are the price of that protection.

Before you sign a no-win-no-fee agreement

• Confirm the success-fee percentage that will actually apply, and that it is capped at 25% of general damages and past losses only.
• Ask whether there is an ATE policy, what it covers, who pays the premium and when.
• Check your QOCS position — confirm you won't normally owe the defendant's costs if you lose.
• List the disbursements you could ever be exposed to, and how they are funded.
• Get every figure in writing before you sign, and use the SRA register and the Law Society's Find a Solicitor to check the firm is regulated.

For a sense of how all this fits into the wider journey — from gathering evidence to settlement — see our walkthrough of the personal injury claim process, and remember that funding has to be arranged within the relevant claim time limits.

Frequently asked questions