However, I disagree with your general assessment of delays working to the insurance company’s advantage. The only real advantage they have is the insurance they are earning on the money they will eventually pay out (and in today’s economic climate, that’s not a high rate of interest) and the bookkeeping factors, which I’m not 100% sure about. Whatever the case, waiting for years and paying thousands of dollars will not really save any money on settlement in a $25k claim (that’s a small one), and while I could potentially see some scared attorneys taking less money closer to trial, around here, we have the opposite opinion. If you pay us early, we aren’t spending years and resources on the case, so we can economically (to the benefit of the client) pay less; but if you wait to the end, our numbers do not drop. They might not necessarily go up, depending on how late the settlement occurs; but they definitely will not drop.

And surely you’re not blind to the fact that in plenty of cases delay does work to the advantage (and profit) of the insurance companies as plaintiffs and their lawyers get weary and settle for less that they might otherwise get.

HoP, you should read John Grisham latest book it talks about lawyers and firms charging lots of hours. But they in turn are expected to charge 10,000 hours a year because that’s what the insurance company ‘budgets’ and if they only charge 9,000 hours in a year then next year the insurance companies will only budget 9,000 hours.