Types and Causes of lawyers' Professional Liability Claims: The Search for Facts
This article has resulted from the author's work in 1978 and 1979, under the American Bar Foundation's Liaison Research Program, with the American Bar Association's Special Committee on Lawyers' Professional Liability. The author appreciates the opportunity of taking part in the Special Committee's work. He is particularly grateful to John W. Pompelli, Staff Director for the Special Committee, for sharing his immense knowledge of the professional liability insurance market. The opinions expressed here, however, are solely those of the author and should not be understood to reflect the official position of the Special Committee or any of its members.
Abstract
Lawyers have become concerned about the rising numbers and the rising amounts of professional liability claims, which have in turn driven up liability insurance premiums and temporarily even caused an alarming contraction in the supply of insurance coverage. This article examines the state of factual information that could be used to measure and explain the development. It goes on to discuss the potential role that increased knowledge of the types and causes of professional liability claims could play in efforts to reverse the development, followed by a discussion of the difficulties of obtaining usable data from the two principal potential sources—lawyers and their insurers. The second half of the article describes and evaluates the work of the American Bar Association's Special Committee on Lawyers' Professional Liability in developing, in cooperation with the major insurers, a comprehensive data collection and reporting system for lawyers' professional liability claims.
