I’m Eric Lanigan with Lanigan and Lanigan attorneys in Winter Park Florida I’m going to talk to you a minute about our backgrounds.
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Lawyers: A Product of Experiences
We know on a personal level, it’s very common that we think we are to a great extent a product of our environment. The product of the experiences that we had growing up.
We know on a personal level, it’s very common that we think we are to a great extent a product of our environment. The product of the experiences that we had growing up.
That is very much true in a professional context that who we are as attorneys is very much a product of what did we major in in college, what type of work did we do, what kind of experiences did we have outside of law?
Securities and Insurance Litigation
Investment Fraud & Loss
I know in my own history I’ve done a great deal of securities and insurance litigation and that is very much a product of where I came from.
My father was in the insurance business all of his adult life. And I’d gotten my insurance license very early on when I was in college and I worked with his agency on a part-time basis while I was in college to make extra money. And I gained a great deal of knowledge from that in terms of the type of the products they sold, how those products were used in various contexts:
- Deferred compensation
- Different types of insurance plans commonly called split dollar agreements
- Irrevocable life insurance trusts
- Second to die insurance policies
I gradually gained a great deal of knowledge about those types of products and how they’re used. And once I got out of law school I started writing contracts.
The split dollar agreements, irrevocable life insurance trusts, the deferred compensation arrangement. The agents that worked for my Dad would refer to me to put the contracts together and I gained a great deal of knowledge out of that.
And the first insurance litigation I started doing was referrals likewise that I got from agents that worked from my Dad in various types of insurance and insurance litigation.
Has an Insurer Oversold a Product?
There’s a common polite way to talk about maybe when attorney’s bills get a little high and we say that they overwork the case. And I think that you could characterize that or analogize that to the insurance business where you can sometimes say that the insurance agents oversell their products.
Background, Skill, Experience Matter
It’s all basically the same type of concept. And so I’ve gotten involved in some very complex litigation over the years involving insurance products. And sometimes I would be in an environment where nobody else in the room even knew what I was talking about.
Recent Insurance Lawsuit Settled
We recently settled a case for an extravagant amount of money that involved actually legal insurance malpractice and involved probably 18, 20 million dollars in damages. And it involved an insurance trust and an attorney that was supposed to be the trustee of the trust. He had no idea the complexity of the insurance that was involved to maintain it.
Even the Lawyers Were Uncertain
There were a lot of other moving parts. But we went through the entire litigation and I realized that even the lawyers defending the law firm had no real understanding of the complexity of the insurance products that were involved in the case and even my clients corporate attorney at the end of the case, he said, “you know Eric, I never understood what this case was about and I still don’t think that I do but it’s worked out great and all of that is because of the difference of our backgrounds.”
I realized then that I had years and years of background in various types of insurance and insurance litigation that seemed to me to all fall into a very easy to follow pattern to someone who has never had any experience in that realm. It was all just greed. And in the same way, it’s not that I’m any smarter than anyone else, it’s just what I’ve been through.
Choose Attorney Experienced in Your Case
Just like if someone comes to me with a patent problem well they might as well be speaking Greek because I have no idea what they’re talking about. The first thing I’m going to do is to pickup a phone and call a patent lawyer. Because that’s going to be someone who probably majored in engineering in college and has always been interested in math and engineering which is very much what patent law was all about.
And you could say the same thing about complex tax litigation. Those lawyers probably majored in accounting, they’re probably CPAs as well as lawyers and they naturally gravitate in towards that tax arena.
Know Your Attorney’s Background
We’re all a product of our environment and I think that when you talk to a lawyer and you have a particular type of case, it’s not always a matter of is this lawyer, does he seem like he’s very smart, bright, capable? Because a lawyer can be all of those things and be completely the wrong attorney for the case that you have.
So it’s not only talking about your case it’s talking about the background of the lawyer that’s in front of you and do they have a history and background in that area that you can rely on them that they know what’s going on and they understand the deep concepts that created the case, or that create liability or act as a defense against a claim of liability.
So, know your background. Again my name’s Eric Lanigan, Lanigan and Lanigan attorneys Winter Park Florida.
