Several years ago, I was engaged by an insurance carrier to defend many of its insureds in some repetitive litigation across the nation. At one point, the VP of Claims to whom I reported and I were asked to brief the carrier’s VP of subrogation on the litigation. The subrogation unit was exploring whether any recovery actions could be brought against those arguably responsible for the losses and costs. (In most insurance companies, pursuing third party claims is the responsibility of a separate subrogation unit).
We were sitting in the palatial waiting area of the subro VP’s office when I spied a picture on the wall of a well-known outside subrogation lawyer. This lawyer was well known for obtaining several significant recoveries of the carrier. I jokingly asked my guy why my picture was not on his waiting room wall. He said, “Steve. The guy whose picture is on the wall makes us money. You just cost us money.”
I thought about that when I saw a recent study by Buford Capitol on the appetite for in-house counsel to pursue recovery actions. (Burford claims that it is the world’s largest and most experienced provider of commercial legal finance.). Trudy Knockless of law.com recently reported on the Study. According to Burford, the Study was done online, and some 300 US and UK GCs responded.
The key findings:
Only half of the in-house lawyers say they pursue affirmative recoveries when they have claims. While in-house lawyers recognize the benefits of aggressively pursuing recoveries, most say they don’t have the infrastructure and process–they know how–to do so. And more than 40% say they rely on their outside counsel to educate them about potential recoveries and how to pursue them.
Burford is a litigation funding firm and hence