Playbook, law firm
The firm's insurance and the client's are unrelated things
One caller asking whether you are insured wants to know what happens if the firm gets it wrong. Another means something entirely different: they think a policy of their own might pay for a solicitor, and they want you to confirm it. The first has a short factual answer that firms are usually required to be able to give. The second is a question about somebody else's contract, and the assistant is in no position to read it.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for insurance and coverage holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- Professional indemnity cover is a requirement of practising in most jurisdictions and it protects the client against the firm's own error, so the fact of holding it is publishable and reassuring.
- Legal expenses cover attached to a home or motor policy is the client's contract with their insurer, and whether a particular matter is covered turns on wording the firm has not seen.
- Insurers commonly direct work to their own panel, so a client with cover may find their choice of firm restricted, and that is the disappointment behind most of these messages.
- After the event insurance and premiums associated with a funding arrangement are part of how a claim is paid for rather than part of the fee, which is why they surprise people at the wrong moment.
How it arrives
- are you insured if you make a mistake
- i think my home insurance covers legal fees can you check
- what is after the event insurance
- does my union pay for a solicitor
- who is your professional indemnity insurer
- will my legal expenses policy let me use you or only their panel
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Your professional indemnity position, stated plainly | That the firm carries the cover required of it, and whatever your regulator obliges you to disclose about the insurer or the terms on request. Keep it to the facts you would be content to see in a complaint file. |
|---|---|
| Which funding routes you accept | Whether you take legal expenses funded work, union funded work, insurer panel instructions, and on which claim types. This is a fact about the firm and it decides whether an enquiry is worth either side's time. |
| How a client checks their own cover | Where to look on a policy, the wording that usually indicates legal expenses cover, and who to ring. Written so the assistant can help somebody help themselves without reading or interpreting the policy for them. |
| What premiums and insurance mean inside a funding arrangement | Where an after the event premium sits, when it becomes payable and what it protects against. Clients hear insurance as protection and then meet a premium in a settlement statement, so publish the honest version. |
The reply
Two different things get called insurance here, so it is worth separating them. We hold the professional indemnity cover required of firms in our jurisdiction, and our published details set out what we can tell you about it on request [1]. If you mean cover on your own home or motor policy that might pay for a solicitor, that is your contract with your insurer and I cannot read it or tell you whether this matter is covered. Your insurer will say, and they may also have a panel they expect you to use. We do accept legal expenses funded work on the claim types listed here [2].
It names the ambiguity first because answering the wrong one of these wastes the whole reply. It states the firm's own position as a fact and then declines the other cleanly, on the honest ground that the document belongs to somebody else. Mentioning the panel is the useful part, since that is the constraint the caller is about to run into and nobody has warned them.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor quotes wording from their policy, asks whether their claim would be covered, or says an insurer has refused or restricted their choice of solicitor.
I cannot read a policy or say whether your cover applies, and a dispute with an insurer about it needs a solicitor. Leave me your name, an email and the type of matter and someone will call you.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say a matter is or is not covered by a client's policy, because that is a contract the firm has not seen.
- Never suggest that a client can insist on using the firm when their insurer operates a panel.
- Never present an after the event premium or a success fee as though it were included in the firm's charges.
- Never disclose more about the firm's own cover than the material you have published, however reassuring it would sound.
Questions
- Can it tell somebody whether their policy covers them?
- No, and it should not try even when the visitor pastes the wording in. It has no way to see the schedule, the exclusions or the limits, and a wrong answer sends somebody into a claim believing it is funded.
- Is it worth saying anything about panels?
- It is the most useful sentence in this pair. A client who learns about the panel from you rather than from a refusal three weeks later stays in the conversation, and it is a fact about how the market works rather than advice about their case.
- Should the firm's own insurer be named on the site?
- Follow whatever your regulator requires and no further. The assistant repeats published material, so the safe design is to publish exactly what you are obliged to disclose and let it cite that, rather than leaving it to summarise a position from somewhere else.
Keep reading
- Everything for a law firmFee structures, consultation terms and onboarding checks are answerable. Anything applied to a caller's own facts is legal advice.
- Handling insurance and coverage in generalWhether something is covered turns on the policy wording, so the assistant explains process and never adjudicates. Claims have to reach a person fast.
- Out of hours on a law firm site means something has happenedOut of hours here is rarely about opening times. It is an arrest, an injunction or a hearing in the morning, and a form is not enough.
- Locked out of the client portal, with a document waitingThe assistant cannot reset a login, confirm anybody is a client or say what is waiting inside. It can describe the route and take a name.
- What happens between sending an enquiry and having a solicitorConflict check, identity, the client care letter and money on account. The sequence that has to finish before any work happens on a matter.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.