Legal expenses insurance – The Financial Regulators Complaints Commissioner

dunstonh

I've experienced this multiple times. On one occasion, Irwin Mitchell explicitly told me they would not take my case because it was worth less than £10,000. I ended up handling it myself and secured compensation. On another, my policy stated I could choose my own solicitor for an inquest, yet I was given no choice at all. In fact, cover was declined.

Most people go through life never engaging a solicitor beyond conveyancing. Claims on legal expenses are not commonplace. Although it seems you may be an exception to the rule as your wording suggests you have made multiple claims. That may suggest that you are a bit more "aggressive" in pursuing legal expense claims than most, and that your expectations are higher than is realistic.

I've experienced this multiple times. On one occasion, Irwin Mitchell explicitly told me they would not take my case because it was worth less than £10,000. I ended up handling it myself and secured compensation.

A solicitor can decline to act where the likely legal costs are disproportionate to, or likely to exceed, the compensation you might recover. Just because you won your case, doesn't mean they were wrong. Your time doesn't cost you money. Their time does cost money. So, if they felt it was £10k compensation but say £15k of legal fees, they are entitled to advise against proceeding and may reasonably refuse to take the case on.

Some funding models, such as no‑win‑no‑fee or legal expenses insurance, may in any event exclude or withdraw cover if costs become disproportionate to the likely damages, which can also drive the solicitor’s decision not to continue.

MyRealNameToo

What type of LE cover are we talking about here? Home? Motor? Business?

Like any type of insurance there are various qualities of products out there, there are even schemes (not technically insurance) that are free of charge. Some, such as the schemes, do explicitly exclude small track cases as under this track solicitor fees cannot be recovered and so even if you win the insurer ends up paying out.

Reasonable prospects of success, proportionate costs are both common terms.

Given conditional funding, aka no win no fee, has also been brought up, this also often involves the purchase of a specialist form of LE cover known as ATE (after the event). Without it you would face having to pay the counterparty's legal fees if you lose and your own solicitors disbursements. It too has clauses on prospects of success etc and premiums are heavily based on the solicitors success rates. So yes they could say there is a higher prospect of success but then when they have a trend of losing cases they said they'd win then their insurance spikes.

The one complexity in LE cover is that the insurer often delegates a lot of the decision making to the lawyers and clearly lawyers and insurers operate under different regulatory environments.

The only complaint I lost with the FOS was over LE cover. Personally generally still think it's worth it… motor is mainly about claiming injuries and so has a £1k small track limit (other than whiplash). Home to me is much more about the legal advice line than actually making claims.