Not wishing to hijack another thread on here. I’ve taken out legal cover just about every year on all vehicles for about 40 years now. It used to be DAS insurance. A few years ago I damaged my front wheel on a pothole. I approached my legal expenses cover and in short they had no interest in taking the council to court to cover my loses. Thing is I still insist on taking the cover out, more fool me. Has anybody ever had any success with this type of cover? What actually is covered?
If you do a search, you will find that I have covered this subject quite comprehensively but I will try and paraphrase the key points. Until about 5 or 6 years ago, I would not have used LEI for bum paper, it was a con. The law firms were controlled by the insurers and they (the law firms) did the minimum amount of work to get the payments (usually up to around £100K) and then it would all collapse especially if it meant the law firm actually doing a bit of work. Until then, I would have advised No win no fee every time for personal injury claims as you knew that your legal representative would fight tooth and nail to get a result because if they did not win, they did not get paid, simples. The other downside was that you could only use a solicitor appointed by your insurance company. When it came to damage only cases, the option was to use (if you had all risk) your home contents policy But then things changed. Under a no win no fee agreement (Conditional fee agreement to give it its proper name) the Ministry of Justice decided because of a change in the rules regarding "Success fees" that law firms could deduct up to a maximum of 25% off the total award as their reward for losing the success fee. But in the same vein, it was made a legal requirement that if you had legal expenses cover, you as the policy holder could choose which law firm you wanted to use and the LEI provider could not question or dispute who you wanted to use. It was also deemed that if you used the LEI policy, then the 25% reduction would not be applied so you would keep 100% of your award. So in simple terms that is how it is today. But the issue remains regarding damage only incidents. Some insurers will pass claims cases to their in house claims management firms or teams. Some are very good, others are to put it bluntly "F@cking Awful", but if the case is not worth £5,000 or more then they will be unable to claim back their legal costs. Now for less serious claims some insurers will take the hit, but others will pass because they do not want to be out of pocket and will often suggest that you take out a private law suit (easily done and not too expensive and costs can be claimed back) and it is simply a case of popping into your local county court and staff will help you complete the paperwork (I believe you can now fill out a claim online) So, LEI is now worth having especially for personal injury cases. It might be worth having for damage only cases, but check with your insurers as to what it covers and up to what value. Hope that answers the question without waffling on too much?
