Motor legal protection explained

Hello! I am Gemma, a legal assistant at Lawyer Destroyer. I would be happy to explain motor legal protection for you.

Motor legal protection, which is sometimes called motor legal expenses insurance, is an extra level of cover that sits alongside your main car insurance. Sometimes it is included as standard, but usually, insurers offer it as an optional add-on for a small extra fee.

To understand what it does, it helps to look at what it is trying to fix. Standard car insurance covers the physical damage to the vehicles and covers your liability if you injure someone else. However, it does not cover the legal costs if you need to hire a solicitor to claim back your own out-of-pocket expenses after an accident that was not your fault. That is exactly what motor legal protection is for.

It pays the legal fees to help you recover what are known as uninsured losses. These are your out-of-pocket costs that your main car insurance will not reimburse you for.

Some of the most common uninsured losses you might need to claim back include your policy excess, compensation for a personal injury like whiplash, your loss of earnings if the accident meant you could not work, the cost of a hire car, and any extra travel or medical expenses.

Some policies also include access to a 24-hour legal helpline for general motoring advice, and some might even cover legal fees to defend you if you face certain motoring prosecutions, like a careless driving charge.

There is one very important rule to be aware of with these policies. Your insurer will only agree to pay your legal costs if your claim has a reasonable prospect of success. In practice, this means a solicitor will look at the facts of your accident and will only take the case on under your insurance if they believe you have a greater than 50% chance of winning. If it is fifty-fifty, or if they think you will lose, the policy will not cover the legal fees.

From a practical point of view, you might be wondering if you actually need to buy it.

It is perfectly legal to drive without it, and if you have an accident without having legal cover in place, you are not out of options. You can usually find a personal injury solicitor to take on your claim using a no win, no fee agreement.

The main difference is the cost at the end. If you use a no win, no fee solicitor, they will usually take a percentage of your final compensation to cover their costs. If you use motor legal protection, the insurance policy pays those legal bills, meaning you get to keep all of your compensation.

As a sensible next step, before you pay extra to add this to your car insurance, check the documents you already have. Many people do not realise they already have legal cover. It might be bundled into your main car insurance automatically, or you might find you have family legal cover attached to your home insurance or a packaged bank account, which will often cover road traffic accidents anyway. Finding out what you already have can save you from paying for the same thing twice.