Legal Expenses Insurance

Legal expenses insurance can be "Before the Event" (known as BTELEI) or "After the Event" (known as ATELEI).  BTELEI is most commonly attached to your motor policy, although it can be attached to any policy, such as a credit card or house insurance.  ATELEI can usually be obtained after the accident provided you have a reasonable case.

Where you have a BTELEI policy at the time of your accident they will seek to appoint a solicitor for you, often without even asking you first.  This is because they usually have financial arrangements with the solicitors, who pay for the cases. You may be taking pot luck on the solicitor you get, who will often be the one who will pay the most and not the one that is the best. Some are good, some are awful and there is a fair group in the middle. With most of them you will not even get a qualified lawyer looking after your case.  To a lot of them the only concern is settling the case so that they can be paid.

In cases involving minor injuries where issues are simple they can provide a perfectly good service. However, the person handling the case will usually have a very high number of cases to deal with and things can easily be missed which mean you do not receive the proper amount of compensation. Costs in lower value claims up to £10,000 are fixed, so if they buy the case in it will often be given to the least qualified person capable of handling it because they cannot afford to provide a quality service. We have previously encountered one firm specialising in personal injury claims that instructs their staff to aim to spend no more than 4 hours on the case prior to settling it and another who will advise the client to accept any offer received instead of taking the risk of going to Court and not getting paid. We believe you cannot properly represent a client and act in this way.

In more serious cases problems caused by "dumbing down" can be much more apparent and the overall effects can be much greater.  On larger value cases 5% of the claim can become a significant figure worth the other side arguing over. When liability offers are received clients do not get advised properly, if they are advised at all, and may accept responsibility when they were not to blame or a level of responsibility higher than they should. Items of damage get missed. Injuries are undervalued. The overall effect is you receive much less in damages than you should.  For higher value cases you need a lawyer who knows what they are doing.

The legal expenses insurer may try and prevent you from using a solicitor they have not appointed. They may claim this will invalidate the policy or that you have no quality assurance if you do this.  However, they are not allowed to restrict your choice of solicitor, as you will have read above there are issues about the quality of solicitors they use and they have to continue cover for any case that goes to Court. If you are not happy with the solicitor they appoint then you should change.

Where you do not already have legal expenses insurance this can be obtained after the accident.  Know what you are doing and you can obtain a policy which will defer the premium until the end, pay out if you lose and for which the other side have to pay for if you win.

If the case is tough, some legal expenses insurers are quite likely to withdraw cover. This is more likely to happen with ATE than BTE policies.  They are happy to take your money, but do not want to risk having to pay out on the policy. Often the rejection of the case will be on the advice of your solicitor or on a technicality. Do not be fooled by this. Just because they are not prepared to back your case does not mean you have no case.

LEI providers will only back cases with "reasonable"prospects of success.  What is reasonable is always open to interpretation.  They expect you to have at least 51% prospects of winning, but often confuse this with the liability apportionment.  You can have 100% chances of winning but only be likely to recover 20% of your claim as you were also at fault.  Some LEI providers argue this is below 51% and pull cover as a result.  If the other side make an offer within 10% of the true value of your claim they will usually withdraw cover also.

We offer a no-obligation initial consultation. If it goes no further there is no charge. We can and do arrange after the event legal expenses insurance policies. Ring us to speak to the real experts on 01296 662770.