It is often said that solicitors in England & Wales have the widest cover of any profession in the world due to the breadth of the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Minimum Terms and Conditions (MTC), so how do firms sometimes find themselves facing claims for which they are not covered? Below are some examples from cases where the writer has acted for firms, most with happy outcomes.
Policy limit
Claims over the policy limit are surprisingly rare in practice, but insurers and brokers are generally reporting increasing numbers. The compulsory cover is £3m per claim for LLPs, limited companies and ABSs, £2m for sole practitioners and partnerships. Many firms have additional cover, but it will not be as comprehensive. The policy limit includes claimants’ costs; costs inflation, partly due to onerous disclosure obligations, is fuelling the problem. Perhaps the most common policy limit problem in practice is aggregation (see below).
Claim size is not necessarily linked to the size of
