Practice Management

“I knew I shouldn’t have taken that case.” Unfortunately, this is the statement we hear all too often when an insured attorney reports a malpractice claim to ALPS. In light of that fact, this article will encourage you to listen to your own judgment when determining whether or not to take a case and emphasize the importance of appropriate client selection and file opening procedures.

Hindsight offers the benefit of much clearer vision when reviewing a file. This is particularly true in legal malpractice cases. Appropriate client selection and file opening procedures are important risk management tools that you can incorporate into your law practice. Not only does this enhance work satisfaction, we believe that it can provide your clients...

Last week I turned sixty-five and realized that I am not far off being eligible for Social Security and Medicare. The problem is I don't feel old enough to be eligible for either, and I have no desire to retire. Sixty-five used to be the milestone that people kept in mind as the date when they got the gold watch and started drawing their retirement from their employers defined benefit pension. Very few of those exist anymore and most of them have been turned over to the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC) as part of a corporate chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. Now for many of us it's just another birthday with no meaning greater than any other. This thought string got me thinking about lawyers and retirement generally.

The world has...

In 2011, ALPS formalized its commitment to education and risk management with the advent of ALPS Educational Services (AES). With over two decades of working in all phases of the professional liability insurance industry — from underwriting to sales, to marketing and education — there are real benefits ALPS brings to our policyholders and the legal profession. Not only does ALPS provide premier protection to its policyholders, but we have always been committed to Continuing Legal Education and risk management programs.

In order to provide our insureds and the larger legal community with practical solutions to help avoid risk and strengthen practices and professional lives, we offer the following free resources, with more to be added in the...

For years my kids viewed me as not very tech savvy. I suspect that was because I wasn’t a power gamer or perhaps they believed that parental units just don’t get it. Over time however, I have found it ironic that several of these now young adults occasionally call home for instructional help and guidance with their laptops and smart phones. One call of note occurred a few years ago and concerned a laptop that was dying a painful death due an inordinate number of nasty viruses and Trojans that had erased restore points and data as well as turned over control of that laptop to someone else. I was not able to help with this problem since we were separated by several thousand miles at the time. My only advice was to suggest that the time had...

We’re all taking advantage of it; in fact many of us say we couldn’t live without it. We use technology throughout the day to help us stay in touch and communicate. We can text, e-mail, Facebook and blog (like I’m doing right now.) from just about any place with our smartphones and laptops. When it comes to handling a busy practice, the efficiency and convince this can create are indisputable. However, it has changed our work pace and our work place and perhaps not always for the better. Are you addicted to checking your e-mail at all hours of the day and night? Can you unplug when on vacation or a family outing? And what about the pace….do you feel compelled to respond right away even though you may have been working on another task or...

The past few years have been a bit rough in terms of the economy and there are few signs that things will dramatically improve anytime soon. The national debt continues to rise and there are still way too many who are unemployed or under employed. For those who went into this downturn living paycheck to paycheck, the past few years have been particularly hard. One lesson that can be taken from all this is the following. There is value in planning ahead in order to be financially prepared for the unexpected. So, how prepared are you? Not surprisingly, I see the failure of an attorney to appropriately plan ahead, not only as a financial misstep, but a risk management concern as well.

I constantly meet and work with attorneys who have done,...

A typical law firm is not a place where everyone sits around all day drinking coffee and catching up on the latest gossip. More often than not, attorneys and staff are balancing several client matters at any given time. I suspect many feel as if there is never enough time because the workload simply seems to never have an end point. One ramification of this reality can be that attention to certain seemingly minor details goes by the wayside.

The kinds of details that I am referring to are those that are all too easily overlooked. They are the details of presentation and interaction as opposed to relevant legal details. Things like allowing a bill to go to a client that has one or more errors in it, sending a letter to a client with the...

It's hard to believe that ALPS has been around for twenty-four (24) years as of this past March 1^st. Over that time we have amassed a lot of experience, mostly good and some not so good, but on the whole it allowed us to become the best prepared Lawyers' Professional Liability Insurer in the country to meet the needs of lawyers in rural areas. During that time we've gotten very good at defending lawyers when malpractice claims arise and to quote Kenny Rogers, "We know when to hold-em and we know when to fold-em." I don't mean to sound glib, but this experience has allowed us to produce some of the highest quality live CLE events in the country for our affiliated Bars and thousands of lawyers throughout the country.

At ALPS we take pride in...

I received more public comments on The Practice of Law is Dead blog post than any other I've written and they covered the waterfront as to cause and cure. Clearly, lawyers have concerns about the future and much of that concern revolves around lawyer population control. Apparently, Time Magazine was so impressed with my post that they published an entire article, written by Bill Saporito, on the subject entitled The Law vs. Supply and Demand - Is becoming a lawyer a bad investment? The article is so well written and so on point to my earlier blog discussion that I encourage you to read it so you can get the full impact without having to read my paraphrase of it in this post. Unfortunately, you may have to pay to read the article (it's worth...

Believe it or not, file handoffs can lead to trouble if not properly managed. It doesn’t matter if the handoff is from a partner to an associate, from one firm to another post referral or purchase of a practice, or is to a new firm or attorney after the current attorney’s practice has ended due to death, disability, retirement, or disciplinary action. There are concerns that should be addressed with all of three situations. Why? Because an attorney’s liability for a client file isn’t limited to the decisions made or actions taken solely during the time he or she is personally responsible for doing the work on that file.

Consider the partner to associate handoff. What if the partner’s perspective is that the work on the file being handed off...

Okay so it's a bad paraphrase, but it makes a point. At some point in life every lawyer realizes that the practice culture, practice rules, client demands and expectations have changed drastically from what they knew oh so may years ago, and for many not for the better. I think this probably holds true for most lawyers who entered the practice in the last century, but I suspect it applies more for those of us that started practice just before the beginning of the information age. Population growth and concentration, inflation, speed of communication, ease of research and economic expectations all played a role in the meteoric change. The future of the practice of law belongs to the younger generation of lawyers and they face a daunting and...

By Robert W. Minto, ALPS CEO, robertminto@alpsnet.com
 

It usually follows that when the wind blows the insurance market acts accordingly. Bracing itself the market hardens and prices go up. It's logical; repairing wind damage costs money and insurance prices increase to cover those costs. The wind blew in 2011 and early 2012 so we should see firming in property and casualty pricing in the next renewal cycle. What does the wind have to do with Lawyers Professional Liability Insurance (LPLI)? Technically nothing, but practically everything. LPLI is a subset of Casualty Insurance and is dependent on the same reinsurance sources as the general casualty markets. In other words, the industry as a whole floats on the same tides.

In Theory

The...

When discussing past malpractice claims or disciplinary matters with attorneys, I often hear statements along the lines of “I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to take that client on” or “That was one of those no good deed goes unpunished situations.” Effective risk management begins with client screening, and those statements strongly suggested that there was room for improvement in that area. If the above statements ring true for you now and again, regardless of whether a claim or complaint ever arose, consider taking some time to reflect upon your own client screening practices.

While I believe that most attorneys are skilled at screening potential new matters, not as many are as effective when it comes to screening potential new clients. Yes,...

We’ve all seen the ads. Don’t buy from the little guy when the big boys have so much more to offer. Of course, how many of us truly foresaw AIG’s troubles, the bankruptcy of GM, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, or that even a few large insurance companies would buy small banks in order to qualify for TARP funds in order to shore up the books. I don’t know about you, but I was not exactly pleased about the size of all those government bailouts. As I see it, big definitely doesn’t equate with better, more secure, well managed or anything else. Big is just that, big. I’m not impressed by the size of any particular corporation. 

But wait, the big boys then follow up with ads that promise the best price. It’s the old “We won’t be undersold!” song...

First of all, thanks to the great folks at ALPS for the kind invitation to post here at the ALPS411 blog. I've been a reader for a while, particularly since I set up a solo law practice almost 2 years ago. Since that time, I've had my feet firmly planted with one foot on the ground and another in the cloud.

(Quick Aside: If you are looking for a post on cyber securtiy, client confidence issues, or other tech oriented  thoughts about the "Cloud" as it relates to the practice of law, this is not the post for you. There are many wonderful posts here at the ALPS 411 blog for that and I commend them to you.)

While that last statement could be (properly) interpreted as my being happy with the move and the better work/life balance that I've achieved...

I have always been blessed with excellent vision. In fact, I used to play a game with my kids, which was basically to see who could first read a sign in the distance. I never lost that one; but they kept trying. Of course, and as is to be expected, presbyopia finally settled in. While I still have great long distance vision, trying to read a wine list in low light has become more than a mild irritant and I’m rather frustrated about that. If that weren’t enough, well, let’s just say the kids feel like their comeuppance has finally arrived and a little ribbing comes my way now and again. That’s ok; I’ll still claim them as mine. Now, a fair question might be what does this have to do practicing law? The answer is quite a bit actually. 

Let me...

Some attorneys still ask about how to purchase a tail policy or tell me that they have purchased a tail policy to cover their retirement years. Truth be told, there is no such thing as a tail “policy;” and unfortunately, this type of confusion over what a tail is and what it isn’t can lead to serious repercussions down the line.   

Prior to discussing tail coverage, one must first understand a few malpractice insurance basics. All legal malpractice insurance policies are claims-made products. When a claims-made policy is purchased, the attorneys named under the policy will have coverage for claims that arise and are reported to the insurance company while that policy is in force. Further, and this is important, any act, error or omission...

Stakeholders of law firms are often taken aback when they learn they are responsible both ethically and civilly for those individuals working in or for their firm, including their fellow stakeholders. A complete analysis of how and why is beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say, you may not be as safe as you think you are.

We often hear attorneys say, “the laws of our jurisdiction limit the liability of stakeholders or partners thereby insulating us from personal liability for the negligence of the other attorneys in the firm.” This generalization may be technically correct, but more times than not, it creates a false sense of security among firm owners which leads to complacency or inattention to the very important duty of...

On March 9, 2012 a diverse group of experts in the legal profession will gather at the DoubleTree in Missoula for a full-day Continuing Legal Education seminar entitled “From the Courtroom to the Classroom: A Multi-Dimensional Look at the Legal Profession in the 21st Century.” Headlining the event is world-renowned trial lawyer and educator, Ed Moriarity. Born in Butte, Montana, Mr. Moriarity has practiced law for nearly four decades in the American West. He started his practice in Cheyenne, Wyoming and went on to work with famed trial lawyer, Gerry Spence, as a partner in his Jackson Hole firm, Spence, Moriarity & Shockey. Mr. Moriarity and Mr. Spence worked together on many high profile cases, including the defense of former Filipina...

Have you ever stopped to think about why your Internet security program updates on a fairly regular basis or why Microsoft, Apple, Adobe and other software companies release patches with similar frequency? The reason is that for all practical purposes computer security is something of a reactive defensive play. Internet security suites defend your computer or network from known and understood attacks. Once there is a new virus or other nasty program released by some cybercriminal, software and computer security companies investigate the malware and write code that will protect you from this new threat. Here is the problem. We all are potentially exposed to new and unknown attacks particularly if the computers that we're using have not been...