Personal Injury: national firm aims to cut delay and costs

National firm Russell Jones & Walker is to launch an innovative scheme for settling personal injury claims this month, with a legal service run by the Daily Mirror for its readers the first organisation to sign up.


The firm has been working with strategic partners such as medical experts and insurers over the last year to design and pilot the scheme, which it hopes will deliver faster compensation and rehabilitation as well as reduce costs.


The scheme - which is backed by the Claims Standards Council and will be made available to other firms - will use Claimsense, a shared file system developed by IT specialist Elision for handling mining claims that can be accessed by all parties (see [2005] Gazette, 27 January, 9). A protocol has also been devised to streamline the process.


Fraser Whitehead, a partner at Russell Jones & Walker, said: 'The scheme is about delivering the right compensation quickly and ethically, increasing consumer confidence, removing the adversarial element and reducing the cost of the compensation process including reducing legal costs.'


Russell Jones & Walker is the preferred legal supplier to Mirror Legal Services, which provides readers with information on how to obtain ethical personal injury legal advice.


Kerry O'Connor, director of business enterprise at Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), told the Gazette the newspaper will publicise the scheme and steer clients to Russell Jones & Walker in return for a share of the firm's commission, adding: 'No extra money will be taken from successful claimants by MGN.'