Elevating your Litigation Managment Efforts

Addressing a critical need for claims expertise and collaboration to improve litigated outcomes.

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*** This is a summary of a lengthy, upcoming article I will soon be posting here!

Big Picture

In recent years, litigation management (LM) teams and related processes have become more siloed and formulaic (and perhaps outdated!), examples include: enforced (rote) staff and panel use; centralized expense management through bill review; standardized firm guidance and expectations with limited quality reviews/controls, etc. Many of these approaches were instituted in the late 1990s and early 2000s simply to get a handle on litigation spend.

While some strategies have been useful, and have certainly helped with expense management, the landscape in which carriers operate is complex and continues to evolve. Approaches to LM should also evolve. A passive, expense-centered view of LM approach will not improve litigated outcomes.

The predicted insurance retirement cliff and recent layoffs is driving a massive loss of knowledge, expertise and engagement of frontline claims, particularly around driving success on litigated claims. Handlers have more work than ever, but significant portions of their work, like LM, is handled by a shared service function, potentially driving less-than-optimal results and a lack of clear accountability for litigated results.

Litigation costs are very real and significant. However, carriers need to balance these costs against a realistic look at the challenging landscape in which they operate. Most cultural changes we have seen over the last few decades are likely permanent – less societal trust more anti-corporate activism. Thus, nuclear verdicts are not going away, but there are things carriers can do to minimize these and drive more predictable outcomes.

Improving approaches to LM will require thoughtful investments in people, data, and technology. This work could be daunting for some carriers. If the approach to litigated claims hasn't been revisited in comprehensive way in some time, it is likely there are more opportunities than time and funding allow. Thus, not everything can be done at once. To start, LM teams and claims leadership should inventory and baseline where they are on litigated claims management. A strategic review and weighting of opportunities is critical. Ultimately, breaking down silos across claims and improving collaboration and knowledge sharing will likely provide the biggest lift for carriers.