With most insurers you can take out legal expenses insurance. However, many insurers do not carry out legal assistance themselves, but work with a permanent executor. Who this executor is, is always stated in the policy conditions. Three types of legal aid administrators are active in the Netherlands:

1. Insurers who only offer legal expenses insurance and no other type of insurance. They carry out the legal assistance themselves and do the same for other insurers. These are the so-called mono-branch insurers. Examples include DAS and Arag.
2. An executor who only works for one insurer: An independent foundation of an insurer that carries out legal assistance for an insurance company that offers other insurances in addition to the legal expenses insurance. These are the multi-branch insurers. Examples of this are Univé Legal Aid and the Achmea Legal Aid Foundation.
3. A commercial executor who carries out legal assistance for several insurers, but does not offer insurance himself. An example of this is SRK.

This page goes on about insurers, but that also means executors.

Insurer/executor provides legal assistance himself

Legal expenses insurance is an insurance in kind. This means that the insurer's own lawyers provide legal assistance. The customer cannot, without consultation with the insurer and without prior permission, engage his own legal representative and deposit the note thereof with the insurer. By working with our own lawyers and lawyers, there is a grip on the quality and insurers limit the costs, so that the premium of the insurance remains affordable.

Insurer/executor can outsource file

It is possible that the insurer outsources a file to another legal service provider. For example, because there is insufficient capacity at the executor or because he has insufficient expertise about the dispute. For this purpose, the insurer works together with so-called network offices. With these offices, the insurer makes fixed price and quality agreements. The network office must meet the same quality requirements as the insurer's own employees.

Customer can choose their own care provider

If there is a judicial or administrative procedure, the insurer will contact the customer to tell him how he wants to help him further. The insurer will therefore point out to the customer that he may choose a legal expert who works at another office. This is called the free choice of legal representative (VKR and popularly called free choice of lawyer). In such a case, an insurer reimburses the costs up to a maximum amount. These amounts can differ per insurer and expert. This is stated in the policy conditions.

Often the customer can opt for a higher maximum compensation by paying a higher premium. If a lawyer is required for the dispute (procedural monopoly cases), the insurer will reimburse a higher fee than if the dispute can also be resolved by an (own) lawyer.

As a result, the insurance premium remains affordable and legal assistance is accessible to the largest possible group of Dutch people.

The quality of service provided by legal aid practitioners is on average rated very positively by clients. All legal expenses insurers and executors must comply with the requirements of the Legal Aid Quality Code of the Dutch Association of Insurers. This states what obligations a legal expenses insurer has towards the customer. If a customer is dissatisfied with the legal assistance of the insurer, he can take the following actions:

• He can go through the insurer's complaints procedure. If this does not lead to the desired result, the customer can file his complaint with Kifid.
• He can make use of the dispute settlement procedure. This legally required regulation gives the customer the opportunity to ask an independent arbitrator for an opinion at the insurer's expense if there is a difference of opinion about the proposed legal approach or the legal assessment of the reasonable chance of achieving the result desired by the customer exists. These actions are listed in the policy conditions. Insurers also inform the customer about this on their website.

Access to justice is essential in a democratic state governed by the rule of law. Dutch people who are legally
need advice or assistance in proceedings, and are unable to pay a lawyer or mediator, are entitled to reimbursement of the costs. In addition, they can seek advice from the legal desk. Collectively, these facilities are called subsidised legal aid.

The government has asked a committee to investigate the rising costs for
subsidised legal aid. In order to keep this system for subsidised legal aid affordable and future-proof, Minister Dekker sent a letter to the House at the end of 2018 in which the contours for the revision of subsidised legal aid were outlined. The minister wants other legal service providers (in addition to the legal profession) to be able to offer legal assistance through so-called legal aid packages. In order to gain experience with this, pilots will be carried out in the coming period.

Role of insurers

Legal expenses insurers play an important role in making legal aid accessible and affordable, but are not a party to the current system of subsidised legal aid. Currently, only lawyers carry out government-funded legal aid. At the request of Minister Dekker, the Association, together with other representatives of legal care providers (legal profession, mediators), participates in consultations on the revision of the system. In addition, LegalGuard (part of Achmea) is currently running a pilot in which LegalGuard lawyers provide legal assistance.

An important starting point for the revision of subsidised legal aid is to resolve disputes at an early stage – before they escalate – and in an accessible way. This can be done by, among other things, organizing low-threshold facilities in the district. If more specialist help is needed, reference can be made to providers of legal aid packages. This makes a wider range of legal service providers available, to resolve disputes in an adequate, effective and affordable way.

Insurers' position

Insurers support this approach. It is good that a wide range of legal service providers can be involved in the provision of subsidised legal aid through the provision of legal aid packages. Quality assurance is of course of great importance here. Through various pilots and in further consultation with stakeholders, including legal expenses insurers, the contours of the new system will be further fleshed out. It is of great importance that this implementation of the plans is done carefully. The method of gaining experience with new working methods through pilots is ideally suited to map the various effects. We think it is important that everyone in the Netherlands retains access to the law and that the new system guarantees this properly.

Four legal expenses insurers and six law firms, affiliated with the Specialisation Association of Social Security Lawyers, are starting a joint one-year pilot in which insurers outsource legal expenses files to law firms.

Insurers more often outsource cases to law firms with which they cooperate a lot. Unique to this pilot is that the collaboration consists of several legal expenses insurers and offices. The participating parties have made agreements about the quality, time spent and costs. The intention is that the participating insurers will transfer 75 files to the law firms during the pilot.

Pilot

The aim of the pilot for the participants is, among other things, to gain more insight into the type of case, the legal assistance to be provided and the use of time. In addition, by collecting this data, participants establish a definition of quality and reasonable costs in these types of matters on which there is consensus between the two. A result of this pilot may be that the results can be used as best practices to help clients in other SZ cases and to the legal profession. Participants both measure the quality of the legal assistance provided in the pilot cases, among other things through customer satisfaction surveys and peer reviews.

Evaluation

After one year, the participants evaluate the pilot and decide whether or not to continue the pilot and, if so, in what form. In the meantime, the participants evaluate the course of the pilot.

Participating insurers
ARAG, DAS, Stichting Achmea Rechtsbijstand and Univé.

Participating law firms
Strix Advocaten in Groningen, Westhoff Advocaten in Amsterdam, JLM Advocaten in Arnhem, Centrum Advocaten in Almelo, Oudegracht Advocaten in Alkmaar and Zumpolle Advocaten in Utrecht.