Why choose the
Dental Law Partnership?

Your first contact with us

Our relationship with clients usually begins with a telephone call to our freephone number 0800 152 2039, which connects you to one of our new business team. A member of our team will listen to your problem and  from experience of many previous dental cases, discuss whether a claim could possibly be brought in the circumstances.

Alternatively, some clients prefer to complete an online claim form.

Our claim questionnaire

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Questionnaire assessment

Once the telephone questionnaire has been completed or you have submitted the form online or returned it to us in the post, the information you have provided will be read and assessed by one of the firm’s directors – three of whom are both solicitors and dentists. We will then contact you to let you know whether we can take your case on or whether we may need some further information. Sometimes we consider that the case may not stand a good chance of success and if so we will write to you to explain why.

Funding Your Claim

There is a range of funding arrangements to pay for legal representation. At the very start of your case we will consider the arrangements available and advise you of the most appropriate funding option for you. We will also advise you regarding the likely cost of pursuing a claim against your dentist.

Once you have signed and returned the funding agreement we will be acting on your behalf and we will deal with the dentist and his/her insurers on your behalf.

No win – No fee agreement

Most of our cases are funded on Law Society approved Conditional Fee Agreements (in other words ‘no win – no fee’ agreements). If your claim is successful, a percentage of your legal costs will be recovered from the dentist’s insurer or defence organisation. If your claim is unsuccessful, you will not be charged for our legal costs.  You will also not pay us anything at all as your case progresses. We will fully explain the terms of your conditional fee agreement at the beginning of your claim process. Your CFA will be created with the specific circumstances of your claim in mind, and all aspects of the agreement will be discussed with you before you commit yourself.

Your own legal representative in the Disclosure team

If we are able to accept your claim then the initial stage of your case will be handled by a member of our disclosure team. Your member of the disclosure team will be your point of contact throughout the initial part of your claim and will be available to answer all your queries and guide you through the process until the case reaches the clinical assessment stage.

Getting the records

The first step of our investigation of your case is to obtain all the relevant dental records. This will be done by your legal representative in the disclosure team. Depending on the records required it can take three or four months to obtain all of the relevant records.

Clinical assessment

Once we have obtained all of the relevant records, our in-house dental experts will then carry out a detailed clinical assessment of your case. Your case file is read by both a Director and also a qualified dentist who will review your dental records and x-rays and who, by applying their dental knowledge and many years’ experience of dental cases, will assess the strength of your case.

We know from the experience of assessing thousands of cases that it is only when the dental records are obtained that we can fully assess the case. Occasionally at this stage we find potential problems with the claim and we may have to advise clients not to continue. However, if this should happen you can be assured that your potential claim has been expertly and thoroughly assessed at no charge to you and we will of course provide you with a detailed explanation of why the claim cannot progress.

Allocation of a solicitor

Once the clinical assessment of your case has been completed your case will be handed over to a solicitor who will represent you during the rest of the case. Your allocated solicitor will be your first point of contact and will be available to answer all your queries and guide you through the process until a settlement is reached.

The Letter of Claim

Once we have obtained all of the relevant records, our in-house dental experts will then carry out a detailed clinical assessment of your case. Your case file is read by both a Director and also a qualified dentist who will review your dental records and x-rays and who, by applying their dental knowledge and many years’ experience of dental cases, will assess the strength of your case.

We know from the experience of assessing thousands of cases that it is only when the dental records are obtained that we can fully assess the case. Occasionally at this stage we find potential problems with the claim and we may have to advise clients not to continue. However, if this should happen you can be assured that your potential claim has been expertly and thoroughly assessed at no charge to you and we will of course provide you with a detailed explanation of why the claim cannot progress.

The Letter of Response and settlement

Once we have finalised the Letter of Claim we send it to the dentist’s insurers who then, under the Court Rules, have 4 months in which to provide a detailed reply to us in a “Letter of Response”.

We find that it can take around a year from taking on a new case until we receive the insurers’ “Letter of Response”. We sometimes encounter delays in obtaining records or additional evidence and the length of time it takes for us to carry out our detailed clinical assessment can vary depending on the volume of work. Once we submit a Letter of Claim we often find that the dentist’s insurers do not provide a Letter of Response within the four-month period.

In many of our cases, the “Letter of Response” we receive from the dentists’ insurers includes an offer to settle the case and a settlement can be achieved at this time. Sometimes the initial offer is not good enough and, with negotiation, a higher offer is received, and settlement can be achieved.

Unfortunately, sometimes the dentist’s insurers deny the case and make no offer of settlement. We then need to move things forward for you by considering whether it is appropriate to commence court proceedings – full details of which are set out in this site on our Claim Process page.