Broker Focus: Legal Expense Insurance

Derrick Leue from PROLINK speaks to us again, giving us his insight into purchasing Legal Expense insurance:

"Why Do People Need Legal Expense Insurance?"

Derrick Leue (PROLINK): "If you have a legal matter, you could have real financial hardship or impairment if you don't have the means to be able to defend yourself or pursue your own legal rights. Legal Expense insurance is very unique because it gets you access to lawyers who specialize in that legal matter that's affecting you, and the insurance company is paying the cost for them to defend you."

"What Does Legal Expense Insurance Include?"

DL: "Legal Expense insurance comes with two key components. The first is you actually get access to advice, telephone-based advice, to lawyers across the country who are well-versed and experienced in the legal matter you're calling upon. So if it's an individual who would have a question on an estate matter, you get an estate lawyer; question on tax would be a tax lawyer; a liability would be something related to liability defense. You also get access to documents, a library of documents, for legal items. And then the second part of the product, which is where there's a tonne of value, is if you are faced with a legal matter where you have to defend yourself, or pursue your own legal rights, then the insurance companies provide the lawyer based on your legal matter with the experience you need and they pay for the legal cost."

"What Costs Does Legal Expense Insurance Cover?"

DL: "Legal impact on both an individual and a company, it's I think very obvious to people there's going to be a financial commitment. So we talked about the cost of $365 per hour, however going to court has a high cost as well, thousands of dollars a day to be in court. But there's also indirect costs such as stress, your productivity, reputational risk...all things that you're going to want to try to reduce the chances of affecting you. And Legal Expense insurance will give you access to people who can hopefully reduce those indirect costs as well as direct financial impact."

"What Types Of Legal Expense Insurance Product Are There?"

DL: "If you are a small to mid-sized business there are a lot of different ways to customize the product, almost a menu-based approach. For example, one company might have an exposure that's more related to employment issues and another employer might have issues that are more a matter of privacy or it could be a mater of someone being injured on a job site. Individuals can also customize a product to cover themselves for driving issues, issues with their home, or issues with pets, or travel, or so on."

"What Types Of Claim Would Companies Benefit From By Having Legal Expense Insurance?"

DL: "If you've got less than 20 employees you typically don't have an HR professional on staff. And if you have any employees, part-time or full-time, then you need to understand the Employment Standards Act and the employment law. This policy's really valuable because if you have any questions that are employment related, it could be hiring someone, terminating, dealing with maternity leave, benefits...then you can call and get access to legal advice. If you need documentation like offer of employment, termination letters, then you have access to that as well. And of course if you actually have a legal issue where somone is perhaps suing you for wrongful dismissal or you need to take action against an employee who has stolen information then those are all areas that are covered by a Legal Expense insurance product for a business." 

You can browse our current range of Legal Expense products here.