Excess Limits Counsel

Excess limits counsel is a lawyer you retain personally — separate from the defence lawyer your insurer appointed — specifically to represent your interest in the portion of a claim above your policy's liability limit. They don't run the day-to-day defence or replace the insurer's lawyer; they advise you on settlement decisions, strategy, and risk from the one angle nobody else in the file is paid to hold exclusively: yours.

The role exists because, once a claim could exceed your limit, your insurer's interest and your own can start to pull apart. Up to the limit, the insurer pays for the outcome, so its incentive to defend and settle well matches yours. Above it, the insurer's exposure is capped while you absorb the rest — and a settlement your insurer is comfortable with near the limit may not be the one you'd choose if you alone carried the excess risk.

Why it matters to you#

The insurer-appointed lawyer still owes you a professional duty of loyalty as their client, regardless of who selects, instructs, or pays them — that's a real protection, not a formality. But a structural tension can exist around settlement strategy within your limit even where no individual lawyer acts improperly. Excess limits counsel exists to put someone in the room whose only job is evaluating the case from your side of the number.

In practice#

• You receive an excess limits letter on a claim pleaded well above your $1 million policy. That's a natural moment to consider a consultation.
• Excess limits counsel coordinates with your existing defence lawyer rather than replacing them — two lawyers with overlapping but distinct jobs, not competing ones.
• A settlement conference is approaching and you're uneasy about a number your insurer seems comfortable accepting near your limit — that discomfort alone is reason enough to call someone independent, without needing a formal trigger event first.
• Cost is typically yours to bear, but weighed against exposure that can run into hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, an initial consultation is a modest outlay for an undivided opinion.

See What Is an Excess Limits Letter — and Does My Insurer's Lawyer Work For Me? for the fuller walk-through, and Duty to Defend for where your insurer's own obligation stops.

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