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14 January 2011 / John Peysner , Angus Nurse
Issue: 7448 / Categories: Opinion , Insurance / reinsurance
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No appetite for BTE?

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In an ideal world a viable solution for the problem of access to justice for individuals trapped between collapsing legal aid and stubbornly high lawyers’ fees would be legal expenses insurance

John Peysner & Angus Nurse explain why BTE is unlikely to be the cure-all solution to access to justice

In an ideal world a viable solution for the problem of access to justice for individuals trapped between collapsing legal aid and stubbornly high lawyers’ fees would be legal expenses insurance (LEI), specifically before the event insurance (BTE). The Jackson review of costs, Lord Young’s review of health and safety laws and the compensation culture, and the government’s consultation paper on reform of legal aid have all renewed attention on BTE.

Buyer be brave 

At the level of exhortation the government clearly thinks BTE is a good idea. Lord Young proposed investigating the practicality of a national scheme and claimed that an extension of BTE would be a fair solution to the problem of access to justice. However, the fact that only half a page out of the 224-page legal

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