Fulbright and Jaworski, an international law firm with 16 world-wide locations, has recently released the results of their 2006 U.S. litigation trends survey, marking the fourth year in a row the firm has analyzed who is suing whom, for what, and for how much. Unsurprisingly, for most insurers, it was another year of endless activity.
According to the firm, 93 percent of insurance companies faced at least one new lawsuit in the past year and insurance company in-house law departments reported that insurance matters were their primary concern (43 percent), followed by contracts (27 percent), and class actions and labor/employment matters (20 percent each).
Law firm partner Bob Owen, one of the architects of the survey, talked about the creation of the survey and its administration for the past four years.
"Generally speaking, it's kind of a small group of us that decides on what we want to know by asking ourselves, 'What do we think could be helpful to the clients?' Let's ask some questions," said Owen.
Owen said that the statistics concerning insurance companies were not out of the ordinary and seemed to follow the expectation with 31 percent of insurance companies surveyed spending at least $5 million dollars on litigation, excluding settlement and judgment costs.
"In all of our discussions, no one suggested that those numbers were surprising or out of line. So as a group we did not find that to be surprising and the numbers were pretty standard," said Owen.
Owen explained that the idea for their annual study came as part of an outgrowth of the firm's global litigation department through an emerging issues committee. When making conference calls in order to get a better look at what was coming down the litigation line began to fail, Owen suggested the survey.
"We received some great responses, and it turned out to be an especially powerful tool for us," said Owen. "It made us more able to help our clients know what is coming, and it has become a fairly consistent piece of our outreach every year."
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