Transparency for E & O Insurance – Finally!
It didn’t take all that long … I received in the mail today, along with more holiday greeting cards, an errors & omissions insurance policy application. Finally, the insurance industry is showing its true colors in the recent campaign to have uninsured lawyers painted with the “yellow band” brush.
The cover letter for the application says, in bold print: “The Rules in California are Changing” and continues to talk about new Rule 3-410, effective January 1, 2010, to the effect that lawyers must disclose to clients in writing that they do not have E & O insurance coverage. The obvious ploy here is to scare lawyers into buying malpractice insurance.
How much more premium money will carriers earn from this new rule? And how much client defections will 20% of the California Bar suffer as a result of the inadequate measure recently adopted by the California Board of Governors and approved by the State Supreme Court? I suspect enough to have made the insurance industry’s efforts worth their while.
As though the bad economy hasn’t hurt the sole and small firm practitioners enough this year, the Bar throws more oil on the fire by either causing this group’s expenses to increase (to the obvious delight of the insurance industry) or its revenue to decrease. Either way makes this generally economically marginal group’s life more precarious …
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