Legal Insurance: Some house insurance policies carry legal insurance too but insurers are often reluctant to take action..
One CASIA member who felt badly let down by a firm he had consulted about investigating his original solicitor was insured through his Contents Policy for "Breach of Contract". His insurers asked a solicitor to investigate the second firm on his behalf. The grossly inadequate investigation, which had resulted in just one negative letter saying, wrongly that there was no cause for action when there was ovewhelming evidence that there was, had been done by an unsupervised clerk.
The solicitor agreed that the complained of second solicitors were probably guilty of a breach of contract but assesed the chanches of winning an action as too slight to be worthwhile, especially as the final bill was not much more than £1,000.
After complaining to the OSS, the bill was eventually reduced considreably but the rest of the complaint has been reduced to "Inadequate Professional Service" with no further penalty. The complainant is not satisfied because the firm who failed to investigate the files of the first had retained a lien on them when he queried the bill. This caused many other problems and delayed his action against the original solicitors and he is still out of pocket.
This should not be the result for someone who is insured and is legally in the right.
N.B. If necessary, find out about "After the event" insurance.