Schedule/Sessions
SESSION 1 - Customer and Client Relations
This session will focus on staff counsel’s relationship with clients and claims professionals. Doing good legal work is important. The best insurance defense professionals provide great service while achieving great litigation results. This course will discuss how to improve service while delivering great litigation results from the perspectives of claims and staff counsel. Attendees will understand the objectives, roles, and perspectives of clients, claims team, and staff counsel. They will also discuss common litigation management strategies to improve litigation services and identify opportunities for improving client and claims customer satisfaction.
Back to topSESSION 2 - Ethical Issues Impacting Staff Counsel
- Speakers:
Marillyn Damelio, Nationwide Insurance Company
Katherine Giddings, Akerman LLP
John McGann, AXA XL
Although most aspects of defense of claims by insurance defense staff attorneys are the same as those related to defense of claims by retained or outside counsel, as employees of insurance companies, staff attorneys must be vigilant in functioning in a manner that protects insureds' best interests, avoids conflicts of interest, and maintains physical and functional separate from other insurance operations. This session will focus on ethical issues in the tripartite relationship among insurers, insureds, and insurance defense attorneys, including issues unique to insurance defense staff counsel operations and interaction of attorneys with claims operations. Individual topics will include ethical issues associated with transitioning to the world of electronic documents; how to resolve conflicts of interest that arise during the course of representation, and protecting the insured's confidential information. The session will highlight ways to avoid ethical minefields from the handling attorney's perspective.
Back to topSESSION 3 - Handling Specialty Cases: Unraveling the Mystery
- Speakers:
Brian Judis, CNA Insurance
Paul Lanagan, Chubb
Kevin Oliver, CNA Insurance
James Pyle, CNA Insurance
Cases arising from “Specialty” lines of business have been perceived by some as unsuitable for staff counsel handling. In reality many staff counsel attorneys are handling certain “specialty” cases with success and to the satisfaction of both Claims and policyholders. This will be a review of the various types of specialty cases, their underlying legal basis, the best practices for receiving this work and the legal issues that arise as a result of the tripartite relationship.
Back to topSESSION 4 - Social Media and the Personal Injury Trial
- Speakers:
Lonita Baker, Jefferson County Attorney Office
Peter Haviland, Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll
Denise Mandi, Selective Insurance Company of America
Twanda Turner-Hawkins, Dematic Corporation
The use of social media in the defense of policyholders is becoming as common as its existence in everyday life. This session will focus on how social media is being used in the investigation, evaluation, discovery, and trial stages of litigation. Particular emphasis will be placed on the use of information obtained from social networking sites, evidentiary ruling at trial, including an analysis of the ethical boundaries that need to be respected by claims professionals and defense counsel.
Back to topSESSION 5 - Proving Value with Data
Insurance defense litigation management is evolving. Most carriers recognize that the simple tools they once employed, like the hourly rate and even less meaningful metrics such as “reputation” or “experience” are archaic and unreliable indicators of a law firm’s cost effectiveness, or the quality of their results. This is true for both staff and panel counsel. While general liability policies require insurers to provide policyholders with a defense there is no requirement that they do so with staff counsel rather than panel counsel. As the competition for work increases it is critical to the survival of any staff counsel operation that they have the ability to harvest information and more importantly be able to use data and metrics to make a compelling case for the use of staff counsel. This presentation focuses on an approach for developing and creating meaningful measures and metrics, the challenges of gathering data, some examples of various reporting formats and whether “quality” is something that can be objectively measured.
Back to topNo Learning Objectives Available
