Dear Law Schools: Please Offer Insurance Law Courses To Your Students

One of the greatest failures in the American legal education system is the complete omission of any insurance law courses in many of our law schools’ curricula.

While insurance may play a limited part from time to time in criminal or family law matters, the availability of insurance plays a critical role in the handling and resolution of most civil law matters. In countless instances, civil cases are filed or not filed, settled or not settled, tried or not tried to a jury based on the extent to which insurance is available to cover the loss. Insurance may provide the civil defendant with defense counsel, may indemnify a defendant in whole or in part for a judgment or settlement, or may pay for certain losses, costs, fees or expenses relevant to the litigation. The rules and principles that govern the availability of insurance in these situations can be complex and highly technical. And for the most part, law school graduates who become brand new lawyers know nothing about them.

It’s not their fault. Many law schools do not offer any insurance law course at any level. Law schools rarely make insurance law a core mandatory course, and in many instances, do not even offer it as an elective on a yearly or semi-yearly basis. Without any background in insurance, many new lawyers stumble through their first years of civil litigation without understanding how insurance is playing a role in their cases. In some instances, it can tee up the new lawyer (and their supervising partner) for legal malpractice for missing opportunities—or sometimes, outright damaging opportunities—to consider how insurance may impact resolution of their clients’ cases.

I am not an academic. Perhaps there are good reasons why law schools omit insurance law from their course offerings. To date, I have yet to hear one. I am just a lawyer who has practiced civil litigation and insurance law for twenty years who sees a glaring weak spot in our new lawyers’ legal background.

My point here is not to razz our law schools. I loved law school. The law school years are one of few times in a lawyer’s career when he or she has the opportunity to explore so many different areas of the law all at once. Because actual law practice has become so specialized, those opportunities to examine in depth a multitude of legal subject areas become more difficult to find after law school graduation. It is a shame that insurance law is not one of the many legal fields that these students are allowed to examine.

Indeed, most lawyers who practice insurance law fall into it almost by accident. It takes a special breed of person to practice insurance law on a daily basis. (If the word “occurrence” came to mind when you read the word “accident” earlier in this paragraph, you know who you are.) When new lawyers demonstrate a knack for exceptional legal writing or attention to detail, insurance coverage matters often arrive shortly thereafter on their desks. We know how to find you.

That said, the main reason for offering insurance law courses is not necessarily to give us coverage nerds a head start on our legal practices (although that would be awesome!), but instead to allow all future lawyers access to the basic principles of insurance law that will have a direct impact on many of their legal careers. In law school, I took classes on secured transactions, family law, criminal law, constitutional law and tax. I hardly use any of the concepts from those courses on a consistent basis in my day-to-day insurance coverage and extra-contractual practice. However, when an issue relevant to one of those areas of the law does creep into my practice on a given claim, and they occasionally do, I feel like I have a sufficient background to begin to address those issues, whether by conducting legal research or consulting with an expert in that field. I am not starting totally from scratch.

And that is the problem: for most new lawyers, they are starting completely from scratch when it comes to insurance law. They are not aware of the very basic principles of insurance law to understand how to even start to address the insurance issues in their cases. Worse yet, they may not be able to even identify those issues because they do not know what to look for. This can be a recipe for disaster. Of course, one hopes that more experienced lawyers are supervising their younger colleagues and can help train them on these matters. It sure would be nice, however, for law schools to play an active role in this education and training, too.

Again, my agenda here is not to criticize the law school community. I just care deeply about the practice of law and the ability of lawyers to represent their clients to the best of their abilities. Some law schools do offer these courses, and their students have a tremendous competitive advantage. My hope is that other law schools can improve their efforts to educate and train our country’s future legal advocates by regularly offering and fully supporting substantive insurance law courses for their students, whether on an elective or (here, I am getting greedy) mandatory basis.

Michael L. Young?is a partner in the St. Louis law firm of Reichardt Noce & Young LLC with a primary emphasis in the practice of insurance law and bad faith. He represents insurers in complex insurance coverage matters at all stages of the claims process. Mr. Young also has advised insurers in drafting policy language and developing claims best practices. He represents clients in Missouri and Illinois.