Legal Expenses Insurance

Abstract

Abstract Lord Woolf has identified the present excessive and unpredictable cost of litigation as being ‘one of the most fundamental problems confronting the civil justice system’. His Interim Report contains proposals for a new ‘fast track’ procedure which will include fixed costs based on the value of the claim. The Report predicts that the new procedure ‘will improve access to justice for those who at present cannot afford to litigate’. It goes on, as something of an afterthought, to express the hope that ‘it should encourage the development of . . . legal expenses insurance’. It is understandable that Lord Woolf should be cautious in his approach. Previous high hopes for the expansion of legal expenses insurance (‘LEI’) as a means of funding access to justice and, in some quarters, as a partial substitute for Legal Aid, have been disappointed. However, the industry is now in a better position than for some years to respond to the challenge.