An online personal injury service that claims to save consumers time and money by cutting lawyers out of PI claims has come under fire from solicitors.

Lawyers claimed the new service would see claimants ‘swallowed alive’ by companies’ claims departments.

Itsmyclaim.com describes itself as the first online legal service to allow consumers to make their own compensation claims for PI, criminal injury and product liability.

To use the service, consumers input the details of their accident through the website. The business is then notified of the claim and will ‘investigate the incident and liaise directly with the consumer to provide fair compensation if they are liable’.

Itsmyclaim.com said the scheme would also enable businesses to ‘fight back’ against the ‘billions of pounds in legal costs’ being made from PI claims. The site displays the logos of several major companies, including banks and supermarkets.

Kerry Underwood, senior partner at Hertfordshire firm Underwoods Solicitors, said the website was ‘utterly misleading’ in the way it described deductions made under ‘no win, no fee’ arrangements and ‘costly’ after-the-event insurance.

Charles Layfield, PI partner at Manchester firm Pannone, added that while he had no problem with information websites, ‘I do have a problem with consumers being encouraged to take on corporations’ claim departments. They’ll be swallowed alive. Even where it’s a fast-track, straightforward road traffic accident, how are consumers going to negotiate over quantum, liability or causation?’

Mark Brickles, chief executive of itsmyclaim.com, denied that the website was misleading. He said the new ‘ethical’ service aimed to help consumers and defendant companies deal with claims ‘expediently and transparently’ without ‘disproportionate legal costs’. Revenue will eventually be derived from companies that sign up to the service, he said, but it was currently ‘philanthropic’.