What the Insurance Industry Doesn't Want You to Know

What should be an exciting time for your company has turned into a crisis. As in-house counsel, your job is to manage it in a way that allows the business to proceed and to thrive. The first step you take will likely be to hire experienced litigation counsel to defend the suit. But an equally important next step ' which is often treated as an afterthought, or neglected altogether ' is to hire an experienced policyholders' insurance coverage attorney to assess what coverage is available, and to fight to secure the coverage to which your company is entitled. Many companies, unfortunately, give away their coverage for intellectual property claims because they accept their insurers' self-serving assessment that coverage does not exist. Even more unfortunate is the fact that defense counsel, risk managers, and brokers are often poorly informed about the extent of available coverage and become unwitting accomplices to the insurers. As a savvy in-house counsel, you should not accept the insurers' predictable denials at face value, but rather you should assume that you are covered until somebody proves definitively that you are not.