Amelans is at the cutting edge of personal injury work. Such is its hard-hitting reputation, the firm is to be featured in a BBC documentary. Paula Rohan goes behind the scenes

One day, the partners of a firm in the sleepy Manchester suburb of Didsbury decided that life was passing them by. Martin Cockx and Andrew Twambley, who headed up niche personal injury firm Amelans, saw other firms forging ahead, yet despite their best efforts, they seemed to be stuck in a rut.

Then in 1999, legal aid was replaced by conditional fee agreements (CFAs) for personal injury cases. The two pounced on the opportunity and since then the firm has turned itself around, taking CFA test cases to the House of Lords and setting up the leading marketing network for personal injury firms, Injury Lawyers 4U (IL4U).


In a few short years, the firm has overtaken many larger and previously better-known practices to be recognised as one of the most high-profile personal injury practices in the country. This brought it to the attention of the BBC and so shortly coming to television screens will be a six-part fly-on-the-wall documentary on the firm called ‘No Win, No Fee’. Messrs Cockx and Twambley, who are down to earth in both their opinions and the way they express them, will be far from the more familiar television lawyers such as ‘Kavanagh’ and the rest.


The firm started as Amelan & Roth, which traded as a general practice in Manchester in the mid-1940s, opening another office in nearby Didsbury in the late 1970s. The firm split in 1985.


Two years later, Mr Cockx joined as a partner, with Mr Twambley coming on board in 1989. In a profile published in 2001, the latter explained how he came to join the profession: ‘When I was 17 and doing teaching training in Blackpool, I went to babysit for a local solicitor whom I discovered had a circular bath and gold-plated taps. The next morning, I jacked in teacher training and applied for the law course at Liverpool Polytechnic.’


Amelans continued providing a broad range of services until Mr Cockx started taking on a large amount of personal injury work. ‘The idea then was to become a 100% personal injury firm,’ he recalls. ‘First crime was dropped, followed by probate and matrimonial. Eventually conveyancing went, and we concentrated on building the ultimate personal injury machine – which is what the firm has now become.’


The firm bided its time until the ideal opportunity arose. ‘We’d been in practice for about ten years before [the Woolf reforms] and we’d always missed the boat,’ Mr Twambley remembers. ‘So when this came up we thought we’re not going to miss this boat – and not only are we going to get on it, but we’re going to build it.’


Amelans first came to public attention on the day claimant solicitors were given the ability to fight for costs by way of part 8 proceedings, when, according to legend, it issued in excess of 800 applications in Macclesfield County Court.


Since then, the firm has acted for the claimants on test cases including Callery v Gray and Sarwar v Alam, which served to set the landscape for all personal injury firms dealing with CFAs. Ahmed v Powell and Dunn v Ward followed. Amelans now boasts that it is ‘feared by insurers and their solicitors alike’, a reputation that it relishes.

The firm’s success in defining the level of costs claimant personal injury firms can receive – and in its fight against insurers’ use of costs negotiators, or ‘costs muppets’ as Mr Twambley insists on calling them – has taken it to the top table. Mr Twambley has taken an active part in the Civil Justice Council’s work on resolving the costs war, a process mainly involving those from representative bodies.

Amelans is headed by a triumvirate comprising of Mr Cockx, Mr Twambley and chief executive Denise Wilkinson, a chartered accountant. They put their success down to having a focused attitude and making speedy decisions, as well as having a good team. Mr Cockx says: ‘It’s like anything else – when you are litigating at that level, you’ve got to surround yourself with the best.’


In a market that is clouded by bad publicity owing to claims management companies – which are sometimes confused with solicitors’ firms by the general public and media – they say they put the client first, aided by a team of solicitors that includes some members who have been with the firm for years.


‘We have a system where the client is allocated to someone on day one, and that person sticks with them all the way through the case,’ Ms Wilkinson explains. ‘People have been here as man and boy, and that gives us continuity. Everybody knows their own clients and their own cases.’


Mr Cockx agrees that what is important is the lawyers keeping tabs on what is going on – he criticises firms that overload their lawyers with work. ‘Our lot here only have a maximum of 80 files per solicitor,’ he says. ‘It works in practice because then they know the clients.’


It seems that Amelans’ staff are happy with their lot. It employs 13 solicitors, three trainees and five paralegals and in true democratic style, the firm’s Web site also has profiles of the ten administrative and support staff. Mr Cockx says the firm is proud of its working environment, which includes flexible hours and other family-friendly policies, and maintains that this has helped it to recruit and retain staff, giving it another advantage over the rivals.


Paul Kimber, head of costs, remembers what attracted him. ‘I first met Andrew and Martin on a fine day in October 2001 in Bury County Court,’ he says. ‘At the time, I was working for a defendant costs firm and had been sent along on two hearings to make my client’s case that the recently decided Court of Appeal case of Callery v Gray should not be followed.

‘The first hearing was against Martin and the second against Andrew. Quite predictably, my arguments were swiftly dismissed. However, my advocacy skills must have made some impression as I was offered a job with Amelans outside the courtroom. I took little persuading that I should work for a firm at the cutting edge of costs litigation and soon defected from the dark side.’

However, Amelans can be hard taskmasters and the partners are not ones for shirking their responsibilities; Mr Cockx vets every claim that comes through the firm’s doors, and he is the final stage in a stringent process that sees Amelans employees visit the site of every accident before they take the case on.


‘We are not in the business of opening crap files,’ Mr Cockx says with a bluntness that is characteristic of the pair. ‘We are not in the business of opening bent files. You are always going to get some cases that don’t work out as you expect, but by and large they are good cases that are going to win.’


Amelans is angry that claims managers have, as they see it, cast a slur on the personal injury world, and have said in the past that they would be opening the champagne if claims farmers were outlawed. They were one of the first to set up a law firm marketing network in the wake of first Claims Direct and then The Accident Group going down, and IL4U has flourished. ‘IL4U takes a hell of a lot of time to run, but it is run on a shoestring effectively,’ says Mr Cockx. ‘The costs of IL4U for members is minimal.’


The benefit for Amelans’ profile has been significant, but the partners maintain that the advantages for the reputation of the profession are bigger. They hope the BBC documentary will also give a true insight into what is often perceived as an industry of seedy ambulance-chasing. The firm has lived with BBC cameramen in the office for several months to film the documentary. ‘It was interesting and fun,’ says Mr Twambley. ‘It’s a bit nerve-racking at first and you are on your guard, but they know that will come down, and you do start to relax more after a while.’


The series follows the progress of claims ranging from a country and western singer who was accidentally shot by an ornamental cannon while performing, to a seven-year-old boy who was run over. The latter may have been more emotive, but the lawyers stress that both cases were equally valid.


Becoming stars of the small screen will also suit a pair who are not shy of media attention. The walls of their office are adorned with framed covers of legal magazines – not least the Gazette – in which they and their cases have featured, and awards they have won.

They also do not mind having a bit of fun at their own expense too. In one interview they aligned themselves closely with Maximus Decimus Meridius, the character played by Russell Crowe in the film ‘Gladiator’, as Mr Twambley explained that in their battle with defendant insurers ‘we see ourselves more as gladiators taking on the might of the Roman Empire’. They have, tongues firmly in cheek, made many similar comparisons since.

It seems that Amelans has miraculously soared from relative obscurity to nationwide prominence within a few years – but what of the future? Mr Twambley says the firm is sticking with its three main aims: ‘To represent injured claimants and provide best and independent legal advice, unfettered by possible conflicts of interest with “work providers”; to flourish in an increasingly difficult market by being proactive rather than reactive; and to rally the majority of the UK’s premier personal injury firms under the umbrella of Injury Lawyers 4U and retain its transparency and identity as the country’s leading solicitors consortium.’


The firm has no plans to branch out of Didsbury, as it is operating economically enough as it is. It is also resolutely committed to personal injury work, feeling it has established a reputation in the field and the ability to help its clients in the best way possible, and is keen to stay focused on this. ‘We’ve found something that we’re very, very good at,’ Ms Wilkinson says. ‘We’ve found a formula and it works.’