Legal expenses insurance: the cover that pays for your lawyer
An unpaid invoice, an employee contesting a dismissal, a supplier who lets you down, a tax audit: the dispute is free, the lawyer is not. Legal expenses insurance pays the cost of defending your rights, and lets you choose your own lawyer.
Legal expenses insurance pays your lawyer's fees, court costs and expert fees when you have to defend your rights, both as claimant (recovering an unpaid invoice, suing a supplier, challenging a public authority) and as defendant in criminal proceedings. It is not the same thing as the defence costs already included in your liability policy, which only operate in the insurer's own interest. Belgian law guarantees your free choice of lawyer. For a self-employed person, the premium on a strictly professional policy is 100 % tax-deductible as a business expense.
Free
Choice of lawyer guaranteed by the Insurance Act of 4 April 2014: your insurer cannot impose one on you
3 tiers
Basic, mid-range, extended: what changes from one tier to the next is the areas of law covered
100%
For a self-employed person, the premium on a strictly professional policy remains deductible as a business expense
What is legal expenses insurance?
Legal expenses insurance is a policy under which the insurer undertakes to defend your interests in a dispute: it advises you, first attempts an out-of-court settlement and then, if necessary, pays the lawyer's fees, court costs, expert fees and bailiff's costs needed to bring the matter before a judge. In other words, it is the cover that stops a dispute from becoming a purely economic decision: dropping the case because the lawyer would cost more than the amount at stake.
For a self-employed person or an SME, the occasions are not rare: a client who does not pay, a supplier who delivers badly, a commercial lease under challenge, an employee bringing a claim before the labour court, a tax audit or an unfavourable administrative decision, a neighbour dispute over the business premises. Each of these can cost thousands of euros in fees before a court has ruled on anything.
Private legal expenses insurance (everyday disputes) and professional legal expenses insurance (disputes arising from your business) are two separate policies. Neither covers the other: to be protected in both spheres you need both contracts. This page deals mainly with the professional sphere, but the logic on the private side is identical.
Private or professional: two worlds not to be confused
This is one of the most common traps. A self-employed person who has "legal expenses cover" often assumes they are protected everywhere. In reality, policies draw a clear line between private life disputes and business disputes. A professional policy will not cover your private neighbour dispute; a private policy will not cover your dispute with a supplier. To be safe on both sides, you need both.
Two areas almost always excluded by default
Whatever the policy, legal expenses insurance never covers, unless the option is added, disputes involving road traffic and vehicles, nor property disputes. Traffic disputes are in principle handled by the legal expenses cover attached to your motor policy.
On property, most policies cover free of charge the building of your private home (private policy) or your registered office (professional policy), and nothing else: a second property, a buy-to-let building or a construction site stay outside the cover without an extension. Always check the schedule of your policy.
Defence costs are not legal expenses insurance: the costly misunderstanding
This is the most frequent confusion, and the one that leaves the most self-employed people exposed. "I already have professional indemnity, it includes legal expenses cover, doesn't it?" In practice, the small legal expenses section tucked inside a liability policy is very limited: it covers only two things.
The mini-section inside a liability policy
Civil recourse and criminal defence
It is limited to non-contractual civil recourse, recovering a non-contractual loss caused to you by a third party (an accident, material damage arising outside any contract), and to criminal defence, being assisted by a lawyer if you are prosecuted before a criminal court in connection with your business. Outside those two cases, it does not operate.
Full legal expenses insurance
A long list of areas of law
A genuine policy covers everything the mini-section leaves out: contractual disputes with clients and suppliers, B2B debt recovery, employment law, tax and administrative matters, professional discipline, disputes with your own insurers, a debtor's insolvency. All areas where, without it, you pay the lawyer out of your own pocket.
The distinction that explains everything: contractual versus non-contractual. What matters is the nature of the loss, not whether you have a contract with the other party. Non-contractual means a loss that does not arise from a contract (the liability policy's mini-section handles it). Contractual means a dispute born of a contract: a supplier who does not deliver what was ordered, a client who claims you did not carry out your assignment properly, a lease under challenge. Those contractual losses, the most frequent ones for a self-employed person, are NOT in the liability policy: they require separate legal expenses insurance. The same goes for tax, staff and public authorities.
The reflex that stops you paying twice
If you take out separate legal expenses insurance, the mini-section inside your liability policy becomes redundant: it covers exactly what the new policy already covers, less well and with lower limits. And you are being charged for it.
That section can be removed from the liability policy, which brings the premium down. It is almost never offered spontaneously: you have to ask. In practice it is removed on the day the separate policy takes effect, so there is never a day without cover between the two. Part of the cost of your new policy therefore pays for itself.
Basic, mid-range, extended: what each tier includes
The sections above are not bought one by one in any order: insurers group them into tiers. As on the private side, what changes from one tier to the next is neither the lawyers nor the quality of service, it is the areas of law covered.
Recovery of undisputed debts, B2B only waiting period: 3 to 6 months
✓
✓
✓
What the mid-range tier adds
Tax law waiting period: 12 months
—
✓
✓
Employment and social security law waiting period: 6 to 12 months
—
✓
✓
What the extended tier adds
Commercial law: contractual disputes with clients and suppliers waiting period: 6 to 12 months
—
—
✓
Personal data and GDPR waiting period: 12 months
—
—
✓
Intellectual property waiting period: 12 months
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—
✓
All-risks cover: any dispute not expressly excluded waiting period: 12 months
—
—
✓
Indicative annual premium
€150 – 450
€400 – 900
€500 – 2,100
✓ included in the tier— not included
The ranges above apply to self-employed activities as a whole. They are wide because your profile weighs heavily: a low-litigation intellectual activity such as a consultant, a trainer or an advisory profession sits at the bottom of each range, while an exposed trade (construction, retail, public procurement) climbs towards the top. For a consultant, expect roughly €150 to 350 at the basic tier, €400 to 600 mid-range and €500 to 900 extended.
Cover to add as an option
None of the following is included in any of the three tiers above. They are added to the policy you choose, each with its own premium.
Optional cover
Waiting period
Available from
Business vehicles: disputes and recourse
none to 3 months
basic tier
Business property
6 to 12 months
basic tier
Costs linked to tax audits
12 months
basic tier
Private life disputes: family extension
6 to 12 months
basic tier
The last line deserves attention: rather than a second policy, you can extend your professional legal expenses cover to your private life. Depending on your situation this is not always the better deal, so compare it with a standalone private legal expenses policy, which covers different areas of law.
This table is a generalisation, and not entirely one
It summarises the offering of several specialist Belgian insurers to give you a reading grid. No single company matches this breakdown exactly. Commercial names differ, limits per area of law vary by a factor of two, and above all: the three tiers are no longer available everywhere. Some companies have stopped selling their extended tier, so what is presented as their top tier is in fact the former mid-range one; others sell nothing but extended cover, playing on indemnity limits rather than on the areas of law covered.
In other words: the name of the tier tells you nothing, the table of insured matters tells you everything, and price is no longer a reliable indicator of the level of cover. That is the table to ask each insurer for before comparing two premiums.
The insurers we consult
We consult the companies and the specialist legal expenses units active on the Belgian market. Some do nothing else; others are the legal expenses arm of a generalist group. The distinction matters: the day your dispute is with one of your own insurers, your legal expenses cover had better not depend on that insurer. It is one of the points we check before recommending a policy.
The five limits to check in any policy
Legal expenses insurance is not a blank cheque. Five parameters decide what you will actually receive, and they are the ones we read first, before comparing premiums.
1
The indemnity limit
The maximum the insurer pays per claim (fees, court costs, expert reports). Beyond it, the rest is yours to pay.
2
Territorial scope
The geographical area in which the insurer intervenes for the area of law concerned (Belgium, Benelux, EU). Outside that area, no cover.
3
The minimum amount in dispute
The minimum at stake for the cover to operate, which avoids expensive proceedings over trivial sums.
4
The waiting period
The period after signature during which any new dispute that arises is not yet covered. Common in employment law, tax, neighbour disputes and construction.
5
The deductible
The amount that always stays at your expense when you claim. Some policies cap it, but it is often there.
The lesson of the waiting period: you take out legal expenses insurance while everything is fine, not on the day the registered letter is already on your desk. A dispute whose origin predates the policy is never covered.
What legal expenses insurance covers
The policy is made up of sections, often activated à la carte. Here are the main ones in a professional policy.
Section (professional)
What it covers in practice
Contractual
Disputes with clients and suppliers: defective performance, delay, a clause under challenge, wrongful termination of a commercial relationship.
B2B debt recovery
Recovering an undisputed unpaid invoice between businesses (see the warning below).
Civil recourse & criminal defence
Taking action against a third party responsible for a loss; being defended if you are prosecuted (Salduz assistance, criminal court).
Employment & social security law
Disputes with your employees (dismissal, contract). Often an option; pointless without staff.
Tax & administrative
Tax audit, reassessment, administrative fine, dispute with a public authority (often optional or extended tier).
Disputes with your insurers
Disagreement over an indemnity, an expert report or the scope of a cover (fire, after-delivery liability).
Insolvency & financial guarantees
Advance on indemnity, insolvency of a debtor against whom judgment was obtained, criminal bail abroad.
Professional discipline & company director
Defence before a professional body; social security law for the self-employed director.
Debt recovery: the advice that saves you trouble
Many self-employed people see legal expenses insurance as a way of getting their invoices paid. That is possible, but within narrow limits, and with a precaution few people know about.
It is not a debt collection agency
The recovery section only applies to undisputed business-to-business debts: not invoices sent to consumers, and not those the client disputes (a disputed invoice becomes a dispute, handled by the contractual section). And legal expenses insurance is neither a collection agency nor a consultancy: its purpose is to pay a lawyer or a legal adviser, not to do their work for them.
The trap: every request for advice or follow-up can be recorded as a claim. And in legal expenses insurance more than anywhere else, accumulating claims exposes you strongly to cancellation by the insurer, after which finding new cover is very difficult, sometimes harder than in motor or fire. So the cover is kept for genuine files, not for every routine reminder.
The exact list, the indemnity limits and the minimum amount in dispute vary widely from one insurer and one tier to another. Two policies at the same price can cover very different realities: the real comparison is section by section, not on the headline premium.
Looking for the private version, covering everyday disputes, family, housing and purchases?
Free choice of lawyer: a guarantee under Belgian law
A reassuring point, and one too rarely known: as soon as judicial or administrative proceedings have to be started, or if a conflict of interest arises with your insurer, the Insurance Act of 4 April 2014 guarantees your right to choose your own lawyer. The insurer cannot impose its in-house lawyer on you.
In practice: you keep the lawyer you trust, and the policy pays their fees within the limits of the contract (fee scales, indemnity limits). This is a fundamental difference from the way insurance is sometimes imagined: here you are defended by someone who defends your interests only, not the company's.
Named perils or all risks: the cover that gets underestimated
Beyond the sections you choose, one distinction changes everything, and it is poorly understood. It concerns the very logic of the cover.
Named-perils policy
The policy wording lists the covered perils one by one, hence the industry term "named perils". Only what appears there is covered: if your exact situation is not listed, it is excluded, however obvious it may seem. And those lists are often short.
All-risks policy
The logic is reversed: everything that is not expressly excluded is covered. Far broader, because real life produces a crowd of situations nobody wrote down.
In practice, that switch is anything but a comfort detail. A great many real disputes are simply not contemplated by policy wordings that are necessarily incomplete. So much so that, at some companies, the all-risks cover alone accounts for more than 30 % of what they pay out. In other words: it is used, and often. Far from a luxury, it almost always deserves a serious look.
The à la carte approach (activating only the useful sections, no employment law without staff, for instance) remains a sound way to adjust the price. But the right decision combines both questions: which sections, and named perils or all risks. That is exactly the sorting a broker does with you.
What does legal expenses insurance cost?
There is no single tariff: the premium depends on the tier you choose and on your risk profile.
The main factors that move a professional premium:
Factor
Effect on the premium
Sector
A litigation-prone trade (construction, public procurement, retail) costs more than a low-risk intellectual activity.
Turnover
The larger the business, the higher the stakes and the volume of potential disputes, and the premium follows.
Number of employees
The employment law section weighs on the rate: no staff, no section, lighter premium.
Use of subcontractors
Subcontracting multiplies contractual interfaces, therefore sources of dispute, and the premium.
Number of business premises
Several sites means more leases, more contracts and more risk to cover.
Where your clients are based
Clients abroad widen the territorial scope to be covered and push the premium up.
Tier & sections
All risks costs more than à la carte; every section added (tax, extended criminal) weighs on the premium.
Limits & minimum in dispute
High indemnity limits and a low minimum in dispute strengthen the cover, and the price.
Indicative annual premium, professional policies
Basic tier
€150 – 450
Mid-range tier
€400 – 900
Extended tier
€500 – 2,100
Scale up to about €2,100 a year. The ranges are wide because profile weighs heavily: a low-litigation intellectual activity sits at the bottom of each range, an exposed trade (construction, retail, public procurement) at the top. Indicative figures, to be confirmed by market quotation.
Two options priced separately
Road traffic and vehicles and property other than your registered office or home, both excluded by default, are added as options with their own tariff:
Vehicles: in the order of €40 to 120 per vehicle for private use, more for a business vehicle or a fleet, where discounts start to apply from a handful of units.
Property: expect €70 to 150 per privately used property (second home, flat let out). For a buy-to-let building or a property in business use, the premium is often calculated as a percentage of the fire premium and can run into several hundred euros.
Indicative figures, to be confirmed by market quotation.
Looking for the private version, covering everyday disputes, family, housing and purchases?
Unless the option is added, disputes involving road traffic and vehicles (handled by motor legal expenses cover) and property disputes other than the building of your home or registered office.
Disputes whose origin predates the policy, or which arose during a waiting period.
Disputes where the amount at stake is below the minimum set in the policy.
Recovery of an invoice owed by a consumer (B2C), or of an invoice outside the agreed B2B framework.
Fines, criminal settlements and penalties themselves (the cover pays for the defence, not the sentence).
Intentional acts, fraud and manifest bad faith.
Certain matters excluded or optional depending on the policy (in-depth tax, company law, intellectual property).
These limits vary widely from one insurer to another. It is the broker's job to read the policy wording for you and to spot, before signature, the missing section that matters for your trade.
CIN
Our advisers' viewSelf-employed & SMEs · Cinassur
"The real trigger is not 'I could be sued'. It is 'I could have to sue, and give up for lack of means'."
The question we always ask a self-employed client: "The last time a client did not pay you, or a supplier let you down, what did you do?" Nine times out of ten the answer is "nothing, the lawyer would have cost more than the amount at stake". That is exactly the gap legal expenses insurance fills. Many people believe their professional indemnity is enough: it defends you when something is claimed from you, but it does not help you recover what you are owed. And since 2026, with the end of the tax reduction, we hear "there is no point any more". Wrong: for a self-employed person the premium remains deductible as a business expense. The right move is to take out cover calmly, before the dispute, with the sections calibrated on what you actually do.
A true story
The designer, the €6,000 invoice and the lawyer who was "too expensive"
A freelance graphic designer delivers a complete visual identity to a corporate client. The work is signed off, then silence: the €6,000 invoice goes unpaid, and the company suddenly disputes "the quality" to buy time. Because the invoice is disputed, this is no longer simple debt recovery but a genuine contractual dispute. Without legal expenses insurance she runs the calculation every self-employed person knows: consult a lawyer, start proceedings, advance the costs, for an amount that may melt away in fees. She considers dropping it.
With the contractual section of her policy, the logic reverses: formal notice, then a lawyer of her choosing, costs paid within the limits of the contract. Seeing the proceedings become credible, the client company settles before the hearing. Cost to her: her annual premium. Without the cover she would probably have absorbed the loss, like so many others. That is the real value of the cover: it makes action possible.
Frequently asked questions
Is my legal expenses premium tax-deductible?
Yes, and this point is underused. For a self-employed person or a company, the premium on a strictly professional legal expenses policy is a business expense, 100 % deductible, in the same way as your professional indemnity, your income protection or the fire policy on your premises. It therefore reduces your taxable base, which brings its real cost well below the headline premium. Two useful points. First, the deduction assumes the policy really is professional: if you extend the cover to your private disputes, the corresponding share is not deductible, and the insurer usually separates it on the statement. Second, do not confuse this mechanism with the tax reduction that existed on certain policies aimed at private individuals: that one has been abolished, but it never applied to professional policies. Deductibility as a business expense has not changed. Simply have the exact treatment confirmed by your accountant, especially if you operate through a company.
Doesn't my professional indemnity already cover my lawyer's fees?
Only in part, and this is the most frequent misunderstanding. Your professional indemnity (or public liability) policy includes defence costs: when a third party claims a covered loss from you, the insurer pays the lawyer to defend you, but in its own interest, since it is the one who will pay the indemnity. Legal expenses insurance acts for YOU and on the offensive: recovering your own costs, claiming an unpaid invoice, suing a supplier who let you down, challenging a decision of a public authority, being defended in criminal proceedings. The two complement each other: defence as defendant sits in the liability policy, while action as claimant and criminal defence belong to legal expenses insurance. Without it, you fund any proceedings you start yourself.
Can I freely choose my own lawyer under a legal expenses policy?
Yes. The Belgian Insurance Act of 4 April 2014 guarantees the free choice of lawyer as soon as judicial or administrative proceedings have to be started, or if a conflict of interest arises with the insurer. The insurer cannot impose its own lawyer on you: you keep yours, and the policy pays their fees within the limits of the contract (indemnity limits, fee scales). This is an essential guarantee: it ensures you are defended by someone who defends your interests only, not the company's.
Why does a waiting period apply to some disputes?
To prevent cover being taken out on the day a conflict has already broken out. In matters where disputes are often foreseeable, namely employment law, tax, neighbour disputes and certain construction contracts, the insurer applies a waiting period: the cover only operates after a period ranging from a few months to several years depending on the matter. A dispute whose origin predates the policy, or which arose during the waiting period, is not covered. The lesson: you take out legal expenses insurance while everything is fine, not once the registered letter has arrived.
Does legal expenses insurance cover the recovery of my unpaid invoices?
Only within a precise framework. The recovery section applies to undisputed business-to-business debts: not invoices sent to consumers, and not those the client disputes (a disputed invoice becomes a dispute, handled by the contractual section). Above all, legal expenses insurance is neither a debt collection agency nor a consultancy: its purpose is to pay a lawyer or a legal adviser, not to do their work for them. Beware of a trap specific to this class of business: every request for advice or follow-up can be recorded as a claim. And in legal expenses insurance, accumulating claims exposes you strongly to cancellation by the insurer, after which finding new cover is very difficult, sometimes harder than in motor or fire. So the cover is kept for genuine files.
Should I choose à la carte, named perils or all risks?
The difference runs deeper than price. In a named-perils policy (the wording lists the covered perils one by one), only what is listed is covered: if your situation does not appear, it is excluded. An all-risks policy reverses the logic: it covers everything that is not expressly excluded. In practice, a great many situations are not contemplated by wordings that are often short, so all-risks cover is far from a luxury. At some insurers it accounts for more than 30 % of what they pay out. The choice depends on your real profile (staff, leases, exposure to tax audits), but all-risks cover almost always deserves to be examined.
Does my policy cover vehicle or property disputes?
Not automatically. Unless the option is expressly added, legal expenses insurance never covers disputes involving road traffic and vehicles, nor property disputes. For traffic, those disputes are in principle handled by the legal expenses cover attached to your motor policy. On property, many policies cover free of charge the building of your private home (private policy) or your registered office (professional policy), but only that one: a buy-to-let building, a second property or a construction site stay outside the cover without an extension. Always check the schedule of your policy before relying on it.
Legal expenses cover calibrated on your business
Tell us what you do, who works for you and where your risks are, in two minutes. We compare the policies on the market, pick the sections that matter for you (recovery, employment, contractual, criminal) and leave out the ones you would be paying for nothing.
We handle the most complex business files: activity cover, disputes, legal expenses, liability and claims management. Our ground is the concrete: the unpaid invoice, the badly drafted contract, the audit that lands. Our conviction is that a good legal expenses policy is judged on the sections it activates for YOUR trade, not on a headline premium. At Cinassur we do not roll out a standard product: we read your policy wording and negotiate cover that holds. Our method →
This page is for information only and does not constitute personal advice within the meaning of the Belgian Insurance Act of 4 April 2014. The amounts, covers, limits, waiting periods and tax rules quoted are indicative, to be confirmed with each insurer and subject to changes in legislation (2026 position, subject to market confirmation). For an analysis matching your situation, contact Cinassur.
