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Saturday, March 07, 2009 | |
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Professional Liability
Insurance Policies In this year’s licensing packets,
lawyers will be provided forms to use for reporting whether they are in
private practice and, if so, whether they maintain professional liability
insurance. Therefore, there will be no information available about
coverage for most lawyers at least until the end of March 2008. An
exception will be lawyers newly admitted or recently returned to active
practice, who will be required to report in connection with becoming
active. The purpose of the insurance
disclosure rule is client protection. Under the Washington Rules of
Professional Conduct, one of the basic principles of the lawyer-client
relationship is that the lawyer will give the client sufficient
information regarding material facts to allow the client to make an
informed decision in matters relating to the representation. See, e.g.,
RPC 1.4; 1.7. Whether a lawyer maintains professional liability insurance
may be a material fact for some persons in considering whether to hire a
lawyer, and it should be easily available to a client or prospective
client.
Professional liability insurance
policies provide insurance coverage for some but not all professional
liability (malpractice) claims made against a lawyer. Most professional
liability policies are written on a "claims-made" basis. This is different
from the usual home-owners or automobile insurance policy. This means that
the insurance company providing the insurance has agreed to cover claims
that are made against the lawyer during the term of the policy. In other
words, the policy that applies to a particular claim is the policy that is
in effect at the time the claim is presented to the insurance company with
a demand for payment - not the policy in effect when the lawyer's alleged
negligence or mistake took place. Malpractice insurance policies typically
limit the amount that the insurance company can be required to pay on each
claim and the total amount that the insurance company can be required to
pay on all claims made against the lawyer during the term (or effective
period) of the policy. The maximum amount of coverage provided by a
malpractice insurance policy is called the "limits" of the
policy.
Although Washington lawyers are
not required to have professional liability insurance coverage, they are
required to report to the Washington State Bar Association, on a yearly
basis, whether they have coverage. They are not required to report
the following:
Not all lawyers maintain
professional liability insurance. Some lawyers may make a responsible
decision not to maintain insurance because the lawyer may choose to be
financially responsible (self-insured), or is an in-house or government
lawyer. The information provided on this
website is the information reported to the Washington State Bar
Association by each active-status lawyer regarding his or her professional
liability insurance as of the date of the lawyer's report to the State
Bar. This information is published here because the Washington State Bar
Association believes that it may be of value to consumers of legal
services. The Washington State Bar Association does not independently
verify the insurance information provided by lawyers. There is no
guarantee that a lawyer has maintained insurance coverage after the report
date or will continue to maintain insurance coverage in the future. There
is also no guarantee that a lawyer has adequate insurance limits to cover
all potential claims or that a particular claim will be covered by the
policy. Note that it is also possible that the information displayed was
erroneously reported or incorrectly entered in the State Bar's
database. The following is a list of
questions that a prospective client might ask before entering into a
lawyer-client relationship with a particular lawyer:
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