Lawyers Liability Insurance - Archived Article

Lawyers Liability Insurance – Archived Article

November, 1999

Professional Coverage for Lawyers and Law Firms

Summary: Insurance Services Office currently offers two forms for lawyers professional liability insurance: an “occurrence” version, designated GL 00 23 and a “claims-made” version, designated GL 00 24. These forms correspond in many ways to the ISO forms for hospital professional and physicians, surgeons, and dentists professional liability insurance see Physicians Professional Liability Insurance—though it should be remembered that the lawyers liability form, by its very nature, is not concerned with liability for bodily injury at all, but instead, liability arising from acts or omissions by an attorney in his or her professional capacity. The policy covers individual, partnership and professional corporation or association liability. The form may be used to cover liability for the acts of lawyers and employed law clerks, investigators, abstracters and paralegals.

Topics covered:

Policy formationInsuring agreementsDefense expenseExclusionsSupplementary paymentsPersons insuredLimits of liabilityPolicy territoryAdditional definitionsAmended conditionsRating

Policy Formation

The lawyers professional liability form may be written as an endorsement to the commercial general liability policy or as a free standing policy by attaching the standard provisions for general liability policies to the lawyers professional liability form.

Insuring Agreements

I. Coverage—Lawyers Professional Liability

The company will pay on behalf of the insured all sums which the insured shall be legally obligated to pay as damages because of any act or omission of the insured, or of any other person for whose act or omission the insured is legally responsible which occurs during the policy period, and arises out of the performance of professional services for others in the insured’s profession as a lawyer.

When the insured acts as an administrator, conservator, executor, guardian, trustee, or in any similar fiduciary capacity, the insured’s acts or omissions in such capacity shall be deemed to be the performance of professional services for others in the insured’s profession as a lawyer, but only to the extent that such acts or omissions are those for which in the usual attorney-client relationship the insured would be legally responsible as attorney for a fiduciary.

Analysis

Although partnership or corporate practice is as common among lawyers as among physicians, lawyers liability forms GL 00 23 and GL 00 24 do not have separate insuring clauses for individual coverage and partnership, association, or corporation coverage as in physicians liability forms. The persons insured provisions of those forms automatically provide coverage for individual lawyers and the professional partnership, association, or corporation to which they belong.