What You Need to Know About Legal Expense Insurance

How Legal Expense Insurance Protects Your Business

October 30, 2023

As a small business owner, what if you needed to hire a lawyer due to a business dispute or lawsuit? Legal expense insurance helps you with legal expertise and legal fees.

Legal expense insurance is available to help cover your legal expenses in many situations. You may also hear it called legal protection insurance.

Here are 5 questions answered about legal expense insurance:

1. What is legal expense insurance?

Legal protection insurance gives you access to legal advice, assistance, and coverage for legal disputes.

As a small business owner, you will be able to get legal advice from an experienced lawyer on a set of common business topics. Legal expense insurance also helps cover the costs of a lawyer to pursue legal action.

Legal expense insurance protects you from having to pay the total cost of any legal fees should you and your small business face legal action.

What legal protection insurance typically covers

Access to a legal advice helpline
Contract disputes
Employment disputes
Employee legal defence
Among other disputes

The cost of determining your insurance premium is typically based on:

Your industry and the services you offer
Any past legal issues
Annual and projected revenues

2. What does legal expense insurance cover?

Legal representation: Legal expense insurance helps cover the fees charged by lawyers and legal representatives while they are working on your case.

Court fees: Filing a claim in a court costs money, ranging from a few hundred dollars and more. Legal expense insurance covers your court fees.

Witness and expert fees: If your court case heads to trial, it is possible that witnesses and experts will be called to testify. Legal expense insurance helps cover costs associated with witnesses or experts testifying in your case.

Translation fees: What if the people involved in your legal claim do not speak English well and need the help of a translator? What if documents need to be translated? Legal expense insurance helps cover the cost of a translator.

3. Who needs Legal Expense Insurance?

You need legal expense insurance if you are a small-to-medium-sized business that needs occasional legal support.

You need legal expense insurance if you do not have an internal legal team.

4. What are the two types of legal expense insurance?

There is Before-the-Event and After-the-Event legal expense insurance.

Before-the-Event insurance is most commonly purchased by small- to medium-sized businesses to provide coverage for unforeseen legal events.
After-the-Event insurance provides coverage after a lawsuit has occurred, covering costs during legal action.

Speak to your Wyatt Dowling insurance expert to determine which type of legal expense insurance is best for your business.

5. What are some examples of how legal expense insurance can help my business?

Employment dispute: Legal advice and defense should an employee or ex-employee file a lawsuit against you.
Tax dispute: Legal advice if you are audited or wish to appeal a tax decision.
Contract dispute: Will help with legal costs to go after a client or supplier regarding a breach of contract or failure on their part to pay an amount owed.
Property damage dispute: Helps cover costs to pursue legal action regarding damage to your property.
License protection: Provides you with legal representation after the suspension, cancellation or alteration of your license required to conduct business.