There have been a number of recent changes to the way compensation is awarded for road traffic injuries. These changes are designed to improve the recovery experience of those injured in road traffic accidents and reduce the cost of claiming compensation.

One of the key questions is whether these changes will lead to a significant increase in lawyer use. This study investigates the trend in lawyer use in a limited sample of road traffic injury claims in Victoria.

A road traffic accident can be very stressful and life-changing. It can also lead to significant losses, including costs relating to recovery, treatment, and care.

A claim is the legal process that allows you to seek compensation for these losses. A lawyer will work on your behalf to help you receive what you are entitled to and to pursue the case to a successful conclusion.

In some cases, your claim can be complicated, and it may take time for you to get all the details together. This is why it is so important to have the right legal advice and guidance at the earliest possible stage.

This study focuses on claims involving lawyer use in the Victorian road traffic injury compensation scheme (TAC). The data were obtained from the deidentified Compensation Research Database at Monash University for claims relating to crashes that occurred between entified Compensation Research Database at Monash University for claims relating to crashes that occurred between January 1, 2000, and December 31, 2015.

A road traffic accident is a very stressful event and can have a major impact on your life. It can result in a loss of earnings as well as physical and emotional injuries. These losses can be alleviated through compensation payments.

It is therefore important that you are able to make claims for your losses if you are involved in a road traffic accident. These can include travel expenses, medical expenses and treatment costs, care and assistance, lost earnings, and other losses incurred as a result of your injury.

Currently, one-fifth of all road traffic injury compensation claims involve the use of lawyers. The proportion has steadily increased since 2000. This suggests that more claimants are using lawyers to enable access to their legal entitlements and justice.

In injury compensation schemes, lawyers play an essential role in enabling claimants to access their legal entitlements. They do so by facilitating claims process management, resolving disputes, and acting as mediators between the claimant and insurers [3, 4].

This study provides one of the largest empirical investigations of lawyer use in an injury compensation setting to date, using evidence from more than 275,000 claims in the road traffic injury scheme in the state of Victoria, Australia. The findings demonstrate that a non-trivial proportion of claims in the scheme involve lawyer use, with this proportion steadily increasing since 2000.

Trends in lawyer use were analysed by year and outcome, grouped into three groups (no-fault claims without impairment lump sum components; no-fault claims with impairment lump sum components; and common law claims) and followed for a minimum of four years. Claims with lawyer use within four years post-crash were relatively more likely to be made by claimants who were female, aged 45 years or above, within the top five SES deciles (i.e., socio-economically advantaged), involved in multi-vehicle crashes and hospitalised for two or more days compared to claims with lawyer use after four years post-crash.

If you are involved in a road traffic accident that was not your fault, it is possible to claim compensation. The aim is to help you recover from your injuries and compensate you for any financial losses that have occurred as a result of the crash.

This can include travel expenses, medical costs, and loss of earnings. You may also suffer from non-economic losses, including pain and suffering.

You should be able to claim if your injuries were severe enough to cause permanent damage and make it impossible for you to work. Whether you can claim depends on your circumstances and the laws in the jurisdiction where the crash happened.

The proportion of claims involving lawyer use increased between 2000 and 2013, although patterns of change differed across groups. The most significant increase was seen in common law claims (from 95.4% in 2000 to 99.3% in 2013), followed by no-fault impairment lump sum claims (from 86.7% to 98.3%) and no-fault claims (from 86.7% to 95.2%).