A Guide to Legal Drafting Skills (Practical Example)

Here is a real-life, redacted letter that was drafted by a lawyer in response to a car accident claim.

Claim Number:

Vehicle Registration:

Date of Incident:

Dear Claims Department,

In response to your letter, dated [date], you state that the third party insurance company has

“…no other option but to deal with the third party claim. We have also contacted the third party insurance company, and they advised that they are still seeking to claim from us as no other company has been dealing with their client's claim”.

According to [name], the driver with whom he was involved in the accident, was not insured at the time of the accident. Following [name]’ written request, the third party insurance company blatantly ignored [name] valid request and failed to supply any evidence demonstrating that the person involved in the accident was insured at the time of the event. Instead, the insurance company instructed [name] to transfer a sum of money into the bank account of an unknown person who was not a participant or in any way involved in the accident. This demonstrates the absurdity of the third party insurance company’s claim “from us”. In fact, this demonstrates the underhand and fraudulent acts of the third party insurance company that purposefully ignored [name]’ request knowing full well that the person driving the car was not insured. Furthermore, the third party insurance company fraudulently attempted to extract money from [name] by asking him to transfer a sum of money into a private account. I therefore feel that the claim from the third party is prejudicial to [name]’ case and has adversely impacted his economic situation. Instead of replying to his written correspondence, the third party insurance company has chosen to remove him from the process and shape and manipulate the factual evidence to suit their “client’s” position.

I have now supplied you with more information than I am legally required to do which absolves me of any further involvement in this “standalone” case. I would appreciate if you could liaise with the relevant parties regarding [name] directly without my further involvement. Please note that if we fail to “make new ground” following this correspondence, I will be instructing my solicitors to commence legal proceedings and launch a separate investigation into the mishandling of this case and potentially fraudulent conduct with the relevant legal bodies.

Yours sincerely,

[name]