Friends with benefits: Richard Whale dispels some myths about after the event insurance
For many years, commercial litigators thought after-the-event (ATE) insurance was a personal injury phenomenon of no direct interest. But as pressure from clients over costs and risk sharing continues to increase, many have come to the realisation that this is far from true.
The prospect of insuring against the risk of losing and then having to pay the other side’s costs and your own disbursements has considerable appeal, not only to the client with little spare cash, but also to the company that could afford to pay but wants to remove the risk from their balance sheet.
ATE is usually seen supporting conditional fee agreements (CFAs), and these are also becoming more common in the commercial world. There was a great deal of publicity around Addleshaw Goddard agreeing a CFA with Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky for his (ultimately unsuccessful) action against Roman Abramovich. A range of other commercial law firms have also announced their willingness to work under CFAs, supported by ATE from
