Going from L&E to insurance defence

[Anonymous]

Been doing employer-side L&E for 3.5 years and just got offered a position at a leading insurance defence firm in town. The pay is better but I'm hearing people say that you are essentially stuck in ID law once you go into it. My questions are:

1. How's the lifestyle of working as an ID lawyer? 

2. Am I limiting my options by going into ID?

Appreciate any insight.

[ZukoJD]

This thread went into detail about insurance defence work and the lifestyle. 
 

FWIW I have a friend who works in ID and well, they’re making a great living and seem to have a great work/life balance. 

[Bob Jones]

Defence work is key. No more worrying about crazy plaintiff clients, having the onus to be pushing files forward, and collections on contingency files. 

[Rusty Iron Ring]

It's not the whole of my practice, but it's become a large part of it since I moved into the area several years into practice, and I don't regret moving into the area. 

Upsides are that you generally have fairly professional clients who are less likely to ask you to do something crazy or counterproductive.  They are mostly not emotional about the files. The work life balance is more flexible - you can very easily be the crazy billing workaholic if you want to be, or you can coast along pushing a reasonable number of files, assuming that you have a reliable source of work. The other defence firms you deal with tend to be pretty pleasant people, and you get to know each other pretty well.  Plaintiff firms are a bit more adversarial, but very rarely are you involved in the kind of constant low-level warfare that seems normal in commercial litigation. And it's a broad area so you can find a niche that works for you.  Some people love personal injury. Some poor misguided souls love accident benefits. There are professional liability files, and large loss construction or property files, and all kinds of really interesting coverage work if you are into the complicated academic analysis type stuff. 

Downsides are that you tend to have a smaller number of clients providing a large volume of work, so if one of them gets bought out or otherwise decides to reorganize their panel of lawyers, you could lose a giant lump of business (in some cases all of your business) all at once. I've spoken to lawyers who basically went from giant thriving practice to retired in the span of one meeting when their main client decided to change panels. And because of the smaller number of clients, you tend to have a few partners with large books of business, while others are stuck almost entirely working on somebody else's files. Also, their billing rules are constantly getting stricter and more finnicky, so you have to put a fair bit of effort into explaining why the time you spend on their files is actually necessary billable work and isn't just some lark that you're doing recreationally. 

And depending where you go, they might be open to you maintaining a bit of an employment practice of your own. I did that, and occasionally an insured client will mention that they have an employment issue, and suddenly I have a new employment client. 

[Bob Jones]

On 12/19/2022 at 5:09 PM, Guest Anonymous said:

Been doing employer-side L&E for 3.5 years and just got offered a position at a leading insurance defence firm in town. The pay is better but I'm hearing people say that you are essentially stuck in ID law once you go into it. My questions are:

1. How's the lifestyle of working as an ID lawyer? 

2. Am I limiting my options by going into ID?

Appreciate any insight.

By the way, are you able to confirm if it’s an ID role, or still L&E work at a wider litigation/ID Firm? I’m curious if this was one of the roles I was interviewing for, if so congrats on the gig!

[Rashabon]

4 hours ago, Bob Jones said:

By the way, are you able to confirm if it’s an ID role, or still L&E work at a wider litigation/ID Firm? I’m curious if this was one of the roles I was interviewing for, if so congrats on the gig!

Seeing as how they are asking about being an ID lawyer and going into ID, safe to assume that it is an ID role.

[Anonymous]

Thanks to everyone for the insights. Yes it's an ID role. Just to clarify - I was doing mostly management-side employment work. 

[MagnaCarter]

I'm surprised that ID is paying more than management-side employment law, but that's good to hear. I echo Rusty's comments about the billing requirements and clients. I find the billing requirements and docketing guidelines to be by far the most annoying part of the job.

The type of work you will do will really depend on the firm. Some firms stick to accident benefits which is very niche and not exciting (sorry). Some firms have varied practices as mentioned above (coverage, construction, personal injury, E&O and D&O). Some firms don't run a lot of trials, which may be what the insurer likes if they want to keep costs down, but means a reputation is built about not having that experience, or floundering at trial when they do go once a decade. Other firms approach the defence quite aggressively and are regularly trying cases.

Hours vary but I think are a good balance between private practice and not crazy. Job security is interesting: there are always opportunity because of the volume of claims, but industry movement towards in-house have left some firms starved out.

A really experienced insurance defence lawyer can make a solid pitch to become a judge. A fair number of judges have some insurance defence background (in contrast to very few judges being plaintiffs lawyers; take from that what you will).