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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...

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...

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...