The Research On Legal Expenses Insurance System

A basic responsibility of the state in modern country under the rule of law is: to ensure that every citizen can access to justice truly and equally, and have the right to access to legal remedies truly and equally. For this purpose, the Western countries have taken a variety of productive initiatives, but they still can't clear the economic obstacles on the road of closing to justice. Particularly, in terms of the vast number of middle-income class, they don't have access to qualified assistance, too high or unreasonable litigation costs is bound to affect their choice of dispute resolution methods. As the middle-income earners accounted for the majority of the members of society, their attitude towards the judiciary will directly affect a country's legal system and the legal culture. To solve this problem, European countries have generally adopted legal expenses insurance system(LEI), which is considered to be an valid way to close to justice, and is prevalent in the West. The problem that "the costs repel the lawsuit" still happens in our country, in order to protect our citizens to access to justice effectively and fully, we should research LEI and introduce it into our country at a proper time. LEI means the insured buys specific policies and pays the premium first, and when legal procedure is involved, that is if there is a claim, the insurer will pay litigation costs instead by settling the claim. The system has become maturation, standardization and systematism in Western countries, it adopts a social operation of the market-oriented way, and transfers the risk of legal costs to the society, which greatly reduces the cost burden of the parties, so as to make the parties use litigation—this dispute resolution mechanism and provide them protection.The essay is divided into five parts:The first part is an overview of LEI, which is divided into four sections. In section one, the meaning of LEI was done a clearly defined; section two answers this question: how does this system develop into a modern system; section three discusses the theoretical basis of LEI from law and the economic point of view, where the idea "close to justice" and the action of sharing the costs of litigation among the community is the legal basis, and the insurability of the risk of litigation costs may demonstrate the feasibility of this system from the economic point of view; section four analyzes the distinctions between LEI and the legal aid system and legal relief system, which is discussing the legal status of LEI, that is, this system does not belong to one of those two systems, these three kinds of system are parallel systems, they are complementary, and jointly building up a country's legal fees relief system.The second part introduces the basic situations and experiences of LEI in several European countries, it is divided into five sections, which respectively describes the basic situations of LEI in Germany, France, Britain and Japan in details, and also introduces its conditions in Korea, the Netherlands and the United States briefly. By the comparison we can see that, despite these countries have different national conditions, and their implementation approach,regulatory approach for LEI are different, and their level of development, operation mode are different too, but no doubt that, LEI make the people of these countries go closer to justice, and the road of closing to justice becomes more smooth, so the governments and legal academics of these countries affirm LEI fully.The third part introduces the positive significances of LEI, which is one of the focuses of this essay. By discussing LEI's positive significance (that is LEI's function) when it is transplanted, we can learn more about this system's advantages, and analyze the necessity of this system in our country. These positive meanings include: to protect the clients to have the right of accepting jurisdiction; to alleviate the pressure of the legal aid system and the legal relief system; to promote the social transformation of litigation risk and the citizens'awareness of civil rights protection; to promote the law and the insurance industry's healthy development.The fourth part analyzes the feasibility of LEI in our country. This is another focus of this essay, this part is divided into two sections. Section one analyzes the existing environment of our country for the introduction of LEI. The qualifications includes: the litigation risk that our citizens facing is growing; the court fees in our country can be predicted; our country's lawyers and insurance industries are becoming increasingly mature. Section two discusses the obstacles that we face when we want to set up LEI and the methods of elimination. The obstacles are: the awareness of insurance and litigation of our citizens are underdeveloped; the lack of LEI's theoretical basis—"Access to Justice" concept; we don't have the law regulations and insurance technologies which are relative to LEI; our country's solicitor's fees are not clear enough and that the lack of such mechanisms which can punish those parties who are abusing lawsuit. The methods of elimination of these barriers are designed targeted, they include: carrying out promotional activities of LEI; fostering the system theories and operating techniques which are relative to LEI; improving the standards of solicitor's fees and establishing and improving the mechanism which could curb the parties abusing lawsuit.The fifth part analyzes the construction of LEI in our country, which gives the specific mode of operation of the system. There are two sections. Section one focuses on the development model of our country's LEI, the article will specifically introduce the three types of LEI model in foreign countries, and point out that our LEI should take different models under the different insurance policy objects; Section two gives specific ideas of the construction of our country's LEI, the article will establish ours LEI from seven aspects, they are: the application form, the application scope, the concrete insurance categories, the exceptions of liability, the compensation limits and deductibles, the insurance rates and the claims of specific rules.