The last of these, legal expense insurance, is different in type from the first three. Prepaid plans in the USA have developed mainly to improve people's access to justice, ie. to reduce the cost of legal advice and representation. They are almost exclusively found in the context of group employee plans, either totally employer-funded, or jointly funded by employers and employees. Legal expense insurance is a means of financing unpredictable legal costs by spreading the risk of liability among subscribers to a scheme, thereby reducing the cost to each. Legal expense insurance has its origins in Europe, where it is operated predominantly by private businesses for profit.
Policies tend to provide cover for unforeseeable legal events.
Policies are mainly sold on an individual or add-on basis, but may also be sold to a group. The LEI project ran from 1987 to 1995. Policies Initially, policies were designed for purchase by low to middle income families. Later, specialised policies were developed for groups of workers with specific unmet legal needs, eg. It was difficult for LEI to design legal expense insurance benefits and premium levels in the absence of fixed fee schedules or predictable litigation costs.