A Leeds-based claims management company which paid a seven-figure sum for its web address opens for business this week, with a strategy that includes buying its own law firm and becoming an alternative business structure.

Chief executive Matthew Briggs, who formerly led the Yorkshire personal injury (PI) outfit Minster Law, told the Gazette he has backing from investors to acquire at least one legal practice.

Claims.com, which will employ six staff at launch, aims to become a ‘rainmaker’ for law firms, he said. It will handle claims in all areas of contentious law including PI, despite government plans to ban PI referral fees.

The company’s embryonic website is licensed to Charlotte Street Interactive Ltd, which is regulated by the Ministry of Justice as a claims manager. Briggs declined to give full details of the venture’s backers and how much they have invested.

However, he confirmed that a co-director of Charlotte Street is John Swingewood, a former head of internet operations at BT and then BSkyB. Also involved, though he left Charlotte’s board in September, is Jeremy Fenn, a former executive director of Skysports.com.

Fenn, who spent three years as managing director of Leeds United Football Club in the 1990s, was chief executive of Sports Internet plc when it was sold to BSkyB in July 2000 for £300m.

The website - originally registered in the first dotcom boom of the mid-1990s - will be ‘soft-launched’ before a marketing campaign in the coming months. That will include advertising through television and radio and the sponsorship of a major football team.

Briggs said the claims management firm would take in everything from employment disputes and financial claims to industrial disease and personal injury. ‘We want to raise awareness and education among members of the public - many are just not aware of what they’re entitled to or what their legal rights are,’ said Briggs.

‘My ambition is that when ABSs are permitted we have the appetite to acquire a law firm of the size of a six-partner firm, although I would not want it to have a partner structure.’

Briggs said he was not deterred by the government’s attack on the so-called compensation culture and legislation to ban PI referral fees.

‘There are some ambiguities about how [the ban] is going to be enforced and policed and what a referral fee is. Why should law firms be outlawed from being able to market their services?’

Even if watertight legislation goes ahead, claims.com will still be protected, he said: ‘If we can’t operate a panel and there’s no mechanism to be paid for the work we do, then all the work will go into the law firm we’ve acquired.’

A non-lawyer who started in the offshore and motor sectors, Briggs was chief executive of Minster Law, the result of a takeover of Yorkshire firm Corries, for almost three years before being appointed as chief executive of Capita’s insurance division.

Later, as divisional managing director for general insurance at Aviva, he handled the £1.6bn sale of the RAC to Carlyle Group.