Farella’s Insurance Recovery Group has been recovering money for clients and protecting their assets for more than 40 years. Our clients include private and public technology companies of all sizes and in all sectors, real estate development and construction industry businesses, venture capital and private equity firms, energy and mining companies, consumer product manufacturers and distributors, public entities and non-profits, as well as executives and high-net worth individuals. As one of the first California-based law firms to establish a stand-alone recovery practice, today the firm works exclusively with policyholders to maximize the value of their insurance, resolve coverage disputes, establish risk management strategies, structure insurance programs, and draft policy language that safeguards their interests.
Our team takes a practical, business-minded approach to using insurance to achieve business and strategic objectives. We understand how insurance companies make decisions, assess risks, and quantify damages and exploit the legal leverage points in claims and policies to protect our clients.
Effective Claims Advocacy and Recovery
Clients rely on Farella’s insurance recovery attorneys to navigate the claims process. We help clients set realistic and achievable expectations that are responsive to their business and strategic objectives. We evaluate potential insurance claims and pursue them by strategically notifying insurers to maximize the chances of a positive response, manage the flow of information from defense counsel and the insureds to insurers with any eye to coverage issues and the insurers’ needs, advocate coverage positions, and negotiate settlements. We adjust our approach to the needs of the particular claim, whether through negotiation, mediation, arbitration, or litigation.
We’re particularly adept at finding and exercising rights to coverage for a wide variety of first-party and third-party exposures, including:
- Securities fraud and other corporate directors’ and officers’ liabilities
- Technology errors and omissions claims
- Data security breaches and other cyber liability risks
- Products liability
- Professional liability
- Intellectual property disputes
- Environmental liabilities
- Employment litigation
- Construction delay and defects claims
- Property losses and business interruption
- Disasters like earthquakes, fires and floods
Insurance disputes are stressful events for businesses and individuals alike. They can be uncertain, slow (because of insurance companies’ internal processes and strategies), and time-consuming. We believe that open, honest, and frequent communication is the most effective tool for reducing the stress of claims and disputes. Throughout the claim process, we provide regular and comprehensive updates to our clients and seek consistent feedback to remain fully informed, so that we can adapt our methods and tactics as client interests evolve.
Consulting and Analysis
We use our claims experience and close, long-term relationships with our clients to better understand—and help them meet—their insurance needs and objectives before claims arise. Our understanding of our clients’ businesses and the risks that arise from them helps us analyze current and proposed policies and negotiate policy wording that addresses our clients’ unique concerns. We advise our clients on, and work with their insurance brokers, to negotiate favorable policy wording in virtually all commercial insurance lines, including directors’ & officers’ (D&O) liability, technology errors & omissions (E&O) liability, cyber, and comprehensive general liability policies (CGL). We also work with captive insurers, pooled risk transfer programs and other risk management devices in drafting policy language and addressing claims.
Creative Billing and Fee Arrangements
Managing cost, particularly that of legal services, is often as a critical to achieving the best possible outcome for our clients as is the dollar value of a recovery or the timing of a resolution. We embrace lean staffing to avoid inefficiencies and overlap, while at the same time draw on the collective experience of our insurance recovery lawyers when needed.
In addition, to helping our clients predict and control costs as we pursue their claims, we offer a variety of alternative billing solutions in addition to hourly rates, including solutions involving one or more of the following alternatives:
- Flat fee and “not to exceed” budgets
- Reduced hourly rates or flat fee plus success bonus
- Full contingency
- Mixed contingency (reduced hourly rates plus percentage of recovery)
- Monthly retainers
- Phased “risk collars”
Read our award-winning blog – The Policyholder Perspective – www.farellacoveragelaw.com