What is legal expenses insurance?
Legal expenses insurance covers you for a wide range of problems you could find yourself faced with in the course of running your business. It’s designed to help you get legal advice as early as possible to prevent a problem arising. For more serious problems, it will provide cover for legal representation and legal expenses if you need to take the matter to court.
Why do you need legal expenses insurance?
No matter how well you run your business, you can still get caught up in legal problems at some point and need help. Should an issue arise, such as a tax investigation or a property dispute, you need to be insured to reduce the risk of a large pay out. Legal expenses insurance costs a tiny fraction of what it could save you.
How much does legal expenses insurance cost?
Legal expenses insurance is included automatically as part of any Salon Gold salon insurance policy. However, it can be added as an optional extra to any other Salon Gold, Holistic Gold, Fitness Gold or Counselling Gold freelance or mobile insurance policy at an additional cost. There are two levels of cover available for freelance and mobile professionals – a silver package and a gold package – and these offer different levels of legal expenses protection.
How do I go about making a claim on my legal expenses insurance?
To make a claim on your legal expenses insurance policy, simply give us a call and let us know what’s going on, and we’ll be able to swiftly guide you through the process. You can also register your claim online.
What if an employee walks off with your clients?
A ‘restrictive covenant’, put simply, is a clause in a contract which prohibits an employee from competing with their ex-employer for a certain period after the employee has left the business. It can also prevent the ex-employee from soliciting or dealing with customers of the business, using knowledge of the customers gained during their prior employment. In the case of salon owners and freelance and mobile professionals, this is particularly relevant as it prevents employees from leaving the business, setting up a competing salon or business down the road and taking their previous employer’s clients with them. With our legal expenses cover, salons that purchase their policy online will automatically get cover for restrictive covenant disputes, so, as long as the salon puts this clause in the employee’s contract, if the employee does this anyway, the salon owner will have backing to chase this through the courts through their legal expenses cover. In the case of freelance and mobile professionals, this particular cover is only available on our gold legal expenses package.
Our legal expenses helpline can provide assistance with employment contracts to ensure that any restrictive covenants are included in the employee’s contract correctly.
What does ‘reasonable prospects of success’ mean and why does this matter when I’m claiming on my legal expenses insurance?
Once your claim has been accepted, it will usually be assessed by a lawyer in order to ensure the case will likely succeed in court. This is called ‘reasonable prospects of success’ and it is a normal part of the legal process. An initial assessment is made on the ‘prospects of success’. This can change as new evidence comes to light, but providing your lawyer believes you’re more likely than not to win your case, your legal expenses insurance will cover the court costs. However, there are some circumstances in which ‘reasonable prospects of success’ doesn’t apply, such as criminal cases.
Can I claim for a dispute which started before I bought my legal expenses insurance policy?
Unfortunately, no. Your legal expenses insurance will only cover you for disputes that have arisen after the policy start date – this includes cases like employment-related claims, where you may have reached a point where you need legal assistance after buying the policy although the original dispute started before the policy commenced. Please do bear in mind however that the 24 hour legal helpline is on hand to provide assistance, even if the claim will not be covered by the policy.
What are the benefits of having legal expenses insurance?
The benefits of Salon Gold, Holistic Gold, Fitness Gold and Counselling Gold’s legal expenses cover includes:
- No upfront solicitor’s fees: the insurer will pay the solicitor’s fees directly to them, so you won’t have to pay anything upfront
- Alternative to legal aid: legal aid can be difficult to secure since you have to be in a low income bracket to get it, and it isn’t available for any employment disputes, which tend to be responsible for a large number of legal claims, so legal expenses provides a safety net.
- 24-hour assistance: as part of our legal expenses package, we offer 24-hour legal advice helplines, which can be useful if you need points of law clarified, so you can approach an individual or organisation with accurate information. If you take legal advice every step of the way when you see a problem coming, it can help to prevent full legal action being taken.
