Before you sign the CFA: why claimant vetting is now a risk decision, not a courtesy

For most of the last decade, checking a new client's account against what could be found about them was something a claimant firm might do if a case felt wrong. Three things have changed that. Fixed recoverable costs now cap what a firm can earn on almost every claim up to £100,000. Fundamental dishonesty now forfeits entire claims, including the genuine part. And the other side has been checking first for years. This article sets out why claimant vetting before the conditional fee agreement has become a risk decision — and what a defensible file looks like.

The arithmetic has changed

Since October 2023 the intermediate track has extended fixed recoverable costs to claims worth up to £100,000. The effect on case selection is simple: a firm can no longer recover a poor selection decision through hourly billing. Revenue per case is capped; the downside on a failed case is not.

The downside is larger than it looks. Even a routine portal claim that fails represents a write-off of roughly two to four and a half thousand pounds once fee-earner time, disbursements and acquisition cost are counted. On multi-track and clinical negligence claims the figure runs to tens of thousands. The Official Injury Claim portal has recorded more than 361,000 claims that exited without settlement since 2021 — no official figure separates abandonment from off-portal settlement, but the order of magnitude is not in doubt.

Every hour a firm does not spend on a claim that will fail, or settle at a fraction of its pleaded value, is margin saved on capped revenue. Case selection is where the margin now lives.

The other side already knows

Insurers and defendant firms have mature intelligence functions. Their suppliers openly market subject profiling and social media capture to evidential standards, and they hold what they find until it is most damaging — the "surveillance ambush" that claimant practitioners have described. In Williams-Henry v Associated British Ports (2024), Shaw v Wilde (2024) and Muyepa v Ministry of Defence (2022), the material that dismissed the claim was public before proceedings were issued. The claimant's own firm was the last to know.

Nothing prevents the claimant's solicitor from seeing the same record first — lawfully, under a documented legitimate-interests basis, with the client told at retainer stage that the firm checks what the other side will check. A vetted client is a protected client: protected from a section 57 catastrophe, and from cross-examination on material they had forgotten was there.

Vetting is validation, not suspicion

The objection most often raised is that a firm acts for its clients, not against them. The answer is that most vetting confirms the client. The reported cases are memorable because they are rare; in the large majority of claims a review of the online record finds nothing that contradicts the account, and that conclusion has value of its own. It supports the decision to invest in the claim, it protects the statement of truth, and it puts documented diligence on the file at the point the firm committed its work in progress.

That last point matters more than it did. Wasted-costs applications against claimant solicitors are now made more readily, and while they fail where the firm acted properly, they succeed where warning signs were ignored. The Solicitors Regulation Authority's 2025 thematic review of high-volume consumer claims referred nine of twenty-five firms visited for investigation. A firm that can show what it checked, and when, is in a different position from one that cannot.

What a defensible file looks like

A defensible file does not contain an unfiltered download of everything a client has ever posted. It contains a record, made when the decision was taken, that answers the specific questions the claim turns on: the pleaded restrictions, the claimed loss of capacity, the named activities. It states what was found and what it means, distinguishes what is established from what is merely suggested, and says plainly what could not be determined. It is proportionate — because a review scoped to a defined and lawful purpose is one the firm can stand behind if it is ever examined.

That is the standard The Extant Report is written to. It is a scoped initial investigation against your objective: structured, source-referenced findings, a clear recommendation, and a dedicated statement of limitations. Where the record warrants deeper enquiry, we say so, and The Extant Investigation is opened only with your approval. Lawfully sourced information only. Extant reports what the record shows; it does not allege, accuse or judge. The decision remains where it belongs — with the professional.

Read: fundamental dishonesty and social media — the cases · Claims due diligence · Start an enquiry