Welcome to another episode of The Lawyer Millionaire Podcast! In today’s episode, we have a special guest, Brad Barkin, a seasoned professional in insurance coverage for law firms. We’ll be discussing the importance of insurance coverage for law firms, the different types of coverage available, and how they can protect your firm from financial risks. Whether you’re a solo practitioner or a law firm owner, this episode is packed with valuable insights to help you make informed decisions about insurance coverage.

Why Insurance Coverage is Crucial for Law Firms:

As legal professionals, we often focus on providing excellent legal services without considering the potential risks and liabilities that can arise in our practice. This is where insurance coverage comes into play. Brad Barkin emphasizes that professional liability or malpractice insurance is just the tip of the iceberg. Law firms should also consider additional coverage such as general liability, workers compensation, cyber liability, and employment practices liability to protect themselves from unforeseen circumstances.

Types of Insurance Coverage to Consider:

1. Professional Liability Insurance (Malpractice Insurance): Don’t fall into the misconception that malpractice claims only happen to a few unlucky attorneys. In fact, statistics show that 80% of lawyers will face a malpractice lawsuit during their career. Malpractice insurance provides crucial financial support in the event of a lawsuit, covering legal fees and expert witnesses. It also offers guidance and support in finding defense counsel to minimize damages and defense costs.
2. General Liability Insurance: Protect your firm from claims of bodily injury, property damage, or personal injury caused by your business operations. This coverage is often required by landlords and provides essential protection in case of accidents or third-party claims.
3. Workers Compensation Insurance: If you have employees, workers compensation insurance is not optional, but legally required in most states. Failure to have it can result in fines and penalties. This coverage ensures that your employees receive medical care and compensation if they’re injured or become ill due to work-related activities.
4. Cyber Liability Insurance: With the increasing number of cyberattacks targeting law firms, it’s crucial to protect your firm’s sensitive data and confidential client information. Cyber liability insurance covers the costs associated with data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber incidents.
5. Employment Practices Liability Insurance: California law firms should be particularly vigilant about this coverage. Protect your firm from claims related to wrongful termination, discrimination, harassment, or other employment-related issues. It’s essential to protect your firm’s reputation and financial stability by mitigating the risks associated with employment practices.

Finding the Right Coverage and Expert Advice:

When it comes to insurance coverage, it’s important to do your research and find an insurance professional who can explain policies clearly and offer the right coverage at a competitive price. Brad Barkin advises seeking out a single vendor who can manage all insurance policies and their administration, streamlining the process and ensuring comprehensive coverage.

Conclusion:

In today’s episode, we’ve learned from Brad Barkin, an expert in insurance coverage for law firms, about the importance of securing the right insurance policies for your firm’s protection. Whether it’s malpractice insurance, general liability coverage, workers compensation, cyber liability insurance, or employment practices liability insurance, having the right coverage is crucial to protect your firm from unforeseen risks and liabilities.

As law firm owners, it’s easy to overlook the significance of insurance coverage, but understanding and assessing the specific risks and needs of your firm can help you make informed decisions. Don’t forget to review your existing policies and consult with an insurance professional to ensure you have the necessary coverage in place.

Thank you for joining us today on The Lawyer Millionaire Podcast! To access free resources, webinars, and to grab a copy of Darren’s book, visit our website, thelawyermillionaire.com. Schedule a time to chat with Darren about your financial goals and create a plan to make your dreams a reality. Remember to subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and share it with your friends and colleagues. Let’s empower more law firm owners to achieve greater success and freedom!

Stay tuned for our next episode, where we’ll bring you more valuable advice and expertise for law firm owners. Until then, this is Darren Wurz signing off, and we’ll see you next time.

Resources:

• Wurz Financial Services

Connect with Darren Wurz:

• dpw@wurzfinancialservices.com
• 30 Minute Chat With Darren
• Wurz Financial Services
• The Lawyer Millionaire: The Complete Guide for Attorneys on Maximizing Wealth, Minimizing Taxes, and Retiring with Confidence by Darren Wurz
• LinkedIn: Darren P. Wurz
• LinkedIn: The Lawyer Millionaire
• Twitter: Wurz Financial Services

Connect with Brad Barkin:

• brad@embroker.com
• LinkedIn: Brad Barkin
• Embroker

About our guest:

Brad Barkin is the current VP of the Law & Accounting Practice at Embroker. Brad has over 15 years of experience in the insurance industry, specializing in professional liability and other professional insurance lines.

Previously, Brad was with Integro Insurance Brokers, where they served as Sr. Vice President from July 2015 to October 2016. In this role, Brad worked closely with mid and large sized law and CPA firms across the country on their insurance needs.

Prior to Integro, Brad was with Lemme, a Division of Integro USA, Inc., where they served as Vice President from October 2005 to October 2016.

Before their career in insurance, Brad worked as a Sr. Business Analyst at ConAgra Foods from August 2004 to October 2005 and as a Sr. Consultant at Manugistics from May 2001 to August 2004.

Brad Barkin has a Bachelor’s degree in Business from Indiana University Bloomington and a Bachelor’s degree in Business from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. Brad is also certified as a Registered Professional Liability Underwriter (RPLU) from the Professional Liability Underwriting Society (PLUS).

Transcript:

Darren Wurz [00:00:29]:

Have you ever wondered how to protect your law firm from financial risks? Or perhaps how to select the insurance coverage that’s just right for your needs? Well, in this episode, we’ll uncover the veil from the world of insurance and risk management for law firms so you can set the stage for a future of financial confidence and security. I’m your host, Darren Wurz and welcome to this episode of The Lawyer Millionaire. Today we have a real treat for you. We’re joined by a seasoned professional on the front line of insurance coverage for law firms, Brad Barkin. Brad services as the Vice President of Law and Accounting Practice at mbroker, an insurance company committed to transforming insurance purchasing with transparency, efficiency, and intelligence. Welcome to the show, Brad.

Brad Barkin [00:01:39]:

Thanks, Darren. Good to be here.

Darren Wurz [00:01:41]:

Yes, I’m excited that you’re, you know, I don’t know, most people probably don’t get excited about insurance, but I know that you probably get excited about insurance.

Brad Barkin [00:01:50]:

Yeah, excited enough, yes. Obviously, it’s a critical instrument in terms of protecting financial stability for all kinds of companies around the world, and probably the largest industry in the world. So excited.

Darren Wurz [00:02:02]:

Absolutely. Yeah. And we’re going to make it exciting today. It really is a critical thing for lawyers and for law firm owners to understand. And I think a lot of folks, when they start their businesses, a lot of attorneys, perhaps when they start their law firms, it may not be the foremost thing that they’re thinking about, but it’s definitely a critical thing to think about. Would you agree with that?

Brad Barkin [00:02:27]:

Yeah, I would agree. I mean, interestingly enough, kind of depends on the lawyers. There are some of them where a malpractice policy is actually their very first purchase because it’s required in some states to have it, but otherwise you’re right. There are plenty of others out there for the right reasons who are just more concerned about setting up their practice and getting things moving. And insurance winds up being somewhat of an afterthought. But most firms out there are carrying insurance to some extent.

Darren Wurz [00:02:54]:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, let’s talk a little bit about you and your background. You’ve had an extensive career in the insurance world. Why don’t you share with us a bit about your journey and how you arrived to your current position at Embroker.

Brad Barkin [00:03:08]:

So I think, like most people in the insurance world, never expected or grew up as a child wanting to be in the insurance world, but here I am. Turns out it’s a great industry. So I’ve been doing this since specifically for large law firms and accounting firms. I started out at a great boutique brokerage where we focused on particularly, like I said, larger firms, large accounting firms, and law firms all over the country was there for about ten years. It was a great experience. That company wound up getting bought and it was a good time for me to look at what else was out there. So at that time, which was around 2016, I realized that technology was really creeping into kind of all facets of industry, but really not so much insurance. And our customers and buyers, generally speaking, we’re fine with the customer service aspect, but the process of buying really left a lot to be desired because it was so redundant and old school and there was plenty of opportunity to make it better. So fast forward a little bit. I wound up coming on with mbroker very early on in the company’s journey and have been here ever since. So during that time, we went from zero customers to several thousand customers in the law firm space, particularly. And our secret sauce has been good customer service and providing a product that has sound financial backing and makes the buying process far easier than what else is generally available out there. So people can come to us in a couple of different ways, purchase with us electronically without talking to anybody if they want to, or have a kind of a white glove handholding experience that’s a little more consultative. So, yeah, proud of what we built and we’re keeping it going.

Darren Wurz [00:05:02]:

That’s awesome. And so you’re working with law firms specifically, and as you’ve experienced that, and as you’ve worked with your clients, what are some of the main risk management concerns that your clients are facing and what are the main types of coverage that are going to be absolutely critical for law firm owners?

Brad Barkin [00:05:20]:

Sure. So we work with a lot of new firms, a lot of firms who are just starting up, really getting their practice going. And their questions often range from what do I need in terms of bare minimums sometimes, or in terms of they’re rolling over practice or they’re rolling over a bunch of customers and they really haven’t had to have an insurance discussion before. So they need to know how much limit they should carry and what kind of customers they have and what’s going to protect them. Usually it starts with professional liability or malpractice insurance. That’s what people are most concerned about. And then when you wind up exploring more with them, it turns out that they usually also have other insurance needs. Sometimes they’re just required, like a general liability policy might be required. Workers compensation if they have any kinds of employees, are often required and then depending on how mature the practice is and what the law firm owners is like, we often get into cyber liability or employment practices liability if they have more employees. So those are the big ones. I mean it tends to be, like I said, workers comp because it’s required in just about every state, a business owner’s policy or general liability because the landlord usually requires it. Professional liability because the law firm owner knows that that protects their interests and most lawyers are going to get sued at some point in their career and then we usually tack on cyber liability and employment practices so they just get very confusing for most people for good reason. So we often talk through with them.

Darren Wurz [00:06:53]:

There’s a lot of risks there to think about, a lot of things that can go wrong that you need to be aware of. Make the case for us. My dad was never really big into having a lot of insurance coverage but it’s an important aspect of running a business and making sure you are doing things properly. Convince us that we need to have all these coverages.

Brad Barkin [00:07:19]:

Sure. Well, the one that’s easy is workers comp because if you don’t, you’ll be fined and penalized. White collar workers comp is not a fun check to have to write but you’re required to have it. So there you go. Malpractice or professional liability or errors and omissions is all the same thing. Most firms know that they ought to be carrying that. So statistically speaking, the number is 80%, which is the number of lawyers that will get sued at some point during their career for malpractice. Yeah, 80% is a pretty big number and if you don’t carry an insurance policy of some sort for malpractice, you basically are self insuring and if something goes wrong, you’ll be forced to come out of pocket for those kinds of issues. They can be extremely costly in terms of defending yourself and having expert witnesses depending on the kind of practice that you have. And then of course, any actual damages or settlement amounts can also be expensive. So most people are wise enough to carry an insurance policy and oftentimes, depending on the kind of practice they’re either or where they are, they’re required by the state to either carry a policy or disclose in California, disclose to their customers if they’re not carrying insurance. You have to proactively come out and say like hey, by the way, I’m happy to be your lawyer, but I don’t carry malpractice insurance and you need to know that. So that’s malpractice and then the other ones in terms of making a case for why to have insurance. We see sadly, some law firms start out and it goes great, right? Like they knock the cover off the ball. They’re very fast growing and they’re hiring and they’re doing all these things we had an interesting scenario somewhat recently where a customer called us up and all we did for them was the malpractice insurance. And they called us up and they said, hey, tell me how to report this to my policy, and asked them what the scenario was. And they said, well, we were a small firm and we’ve been growing and we’ve hired all these great people and someone that we hired who we thought was great, we had to let her go because her work was really lagging and now she’s suing us for wrongful termination. So need to report that under my policy. And it stinks to have to tell them like, hey, you only have a malpractice policy but you don’t have anything that’s going to cover you for those employment type issues. So the kinds of customers we attract are often fast growing and look a lot like that kind of firm and they just don’t take a second to step back and say, like, hey, what are my other risks? Right, so that’s an employment related matter that they didn’t know they could buy a policy for or they just thought that their malpractice policy would cover them for that and it doesn’t. So delivering that message stinks. And then the other one that is way more prevalent and I’m sure most people know about is cyber liability risks. So unfortunately, over the years, the cybercriminals have really realized that if they want to go after low hanging fruit and really get a quick win on getting some money, it’s not going after the large Am law firms because those firms have all kinds of protections. It’s really hard to dupe somebody at a large organization like that. But an easier place to dupe somebody is a small law firm where they probably don’t have the firewalls in place, they probably don’t have their protections and it’s really easy to if you cast a wide enough net as a criminal to try to trick somebody, you’re probably going to get somebody. So we see a lot more cyber liability claims going on and again, people think that they’re protected and oftentimes they’re just not, which is a shame because they wind up coming out of pocket with it.

Darren Wurz [00:11:07]:

Yeah. So you need to have somebody on your side that understands this world and can help you.

Brad Barkin [00:11:15]:

I think so. And it doesn’t have to be a long laborious conversation, right. Like most of the time when we’re talking with our customers, it’s ten minutes. We advise them on the risk they should have and the risk that they have. We tell them what risks are there and we tell them how to protect it and we tell them what costs it’ll take to protect it and then it’s up to them. We help get them educated and they can make the decision as to whether or not they want to carry those policies or not.

Darren Wurz [00:11:38]:

Yeah. Now can you have too much insurance? Is there such a thing as that?

Brad Barkin [00:11:46]:

Yes, I would say probably. I always tell people it’s not my job to sell less insurance. But I’ll often tell people like, hey, sometimes you just don’t need things. You just have to be smart about it. On a professional liability policy, for example, it’ll be rare that we’ll tell somebody like, hey, you don’t need all this limited liability. But sometimes that’s the case, right. We often talk to partners who maybe left a very large law firm where they carried tens of millions of dollars of insurance and they want the same thing for themselves, starting out as a small practice. And we often tell them like, hey, one, that’s probably unnecessary, two, it’s going to be really expensive, and three, it’ll be hard to come by. Most carriers will look at that. Most insurance carriers will look at that and say, what does Darren need $10 million of insurance for? Was something going on here? And so often we can just go to the law firm owner and say, like, hey, here’s the feedback that we’re getting and here’s how much it would cost and let’s talk about your risks. If they need it, we’ll happily place it. Yeah, something is not necessary. And same with large liability limits that third parties might request. Sometimes third parties. If you work as a small law firm with a Fortune 100 company, they might tell you you need to carry, like, X million a limit and sometimes help the law firm owner go back and be like, hey, here’s how to push back on that request and see if they can lower those requirements for you.

Darren Wurz [00:13:20]:

Okay, yeah, that sounds good. I want to circle back to the malpractice because that seems like it’s maybe one of you said 80% and I’m kind of blown away by that statistic. It seems like that’s probably one of the most prevalent risks that law firm owners need to be thinking about. So tell us a little bit more about how malpractice insurance works. Let’s say you have a disgruntled client. How is that insurance policy going to kick in and help reduce the risk and the impact of a potential lawsuit against the firm?

Brad Barkin [00:13:52]:

Sure. Well, in terms of reducing potential lawsuit against the firm, the good news is that the carrier is usually on your side. You want them in your corner and you want them helping you. And they’re professionals and they’re going to help you kind of get through that fight. And they know how to navigate those waters. Right. So they’ll get you a defense counsel. They’ll help you with the conversations against the person who’s alleging wrongdoing. And then the other thing that doesn’t get taken into account very often is the emotional toll from the lawyer. Most lawyers are really good people at heart, and even the litigators out there don’t ever expect to get sued themselves. And when it happens, it’s a humongous distraction. So when you have a carrier on your side. You’ve got good defense counsel. They can help you and they’ll tell you what needs to be done and guide you through it. So statistically, the earlier on you can get the carrier involved, the lower the damages amount and defense costs are going to be as opposed to if you try to engage them late in the game and then we don’t have numbers in terms of what happens if you don’t carry malpractice. I just don’t know. Those things don’t get reported. But I certainly know of stories where people didn’t have insurance. They come to us later and you hear about situations that just went sideways and it stinks. Financially, it can be a huge draw on the firm and then, like I said, emotionally and where all your energy level goes to, that’s hard to measure, but anybody will tell you that that’s a huge burden, too. So having that insurance on your head with you is a big help.

Darren Wurz [00:15:39]:

That’s a great point about the emotional aspect. And if you’re a law firm owner, you need to be focused on running your business and billing your hours and helping your clients. And if you got this huge thing hanging over your head, that’s a big distraction to your work. It is, yeah.

Brad Barkin [00:15:56]:

I mean, anybody you talk to who’s been through it, even if you have insurance, it’s a huge drain. But right when you’re bare on it and having to go out and get your own defense counsel and you don’t really know where to go, yeah, it stinks. No two ways about it.

Darren Wurz [00:16:10]:

Now, I’m curious, obviously there are cases that are different. What are some of these things? I’m not really familiar, but what are some of these things that lawyers could potentially or law firms could potentially get sued over? Are these just clients that were unsatisfied with the work product or with the outcome? Or what are some of the issues that might be at stake here?

Brad Barkin [00:16:35]:

Sure, yeah. I mean, the simple ones are like blowing statute of limitations. That stuff happens all the time. Failure to communicate, just good old fashioned expectation setting. Right. You’re my lawyer and I think I’m going to get this huge settlement and it turns out I didn’t. And then I’m going to go ahead and sue you because I think that I was expecting a million and it turns out I got 10,000. Those kinds of things malpractice allegations happen with that all the time.

Darren Wurz [00:17:04]:

Okay.

Brad Barkin [00:17:05]:

Trust in estate attorneys like having to deal with high net worth individuals and the second generation who is expecting a lot of money, they get pissed off at the estate and trust attorney because I was always dad’s favorite and why am I now only getting 25%? It’s going to get 80%. That stuff happens all the time. So there are all kinds of materials out there and I’m happy to get into it at any point in time. Right now, it might be a little bit boring, but the biggest ones are blown statutes of limitations, failure to communicate in terms of expectation settings, failure to apply the law correctly. There are other ones out there and a lot of times just the simple things right, like communicating with people and again, setting expectations, calendaring things when they’re due and hitting those deadlines prevent a lot of the malpractice claims.

Darren Wurz [00:18:05]:

Yeah, okay, that’s great. That helps me understand for sure some of those things and that makes a lot of sense. So if someone is looking at purchasing malpractice or understanding how much they need, what are some of those things to think about or what are some of the factors they need to consider when they’re purchasing that insurance.

Brad Barkin [00:18:25]:

Sure. So from obviously this is a financial related product and your podcast is very finance oriented. So from a cost perspective, usually it’s starting around for a new lawyer, say two grand a year, and you often can spread it out over twelve months. Like we offer very simple financing programs that a lot of small law firms take advantage of. Even big law firms take advantage of it so they can spread out the monthly cost. And just like I said, it’s starting at two grand. As the practice starts to get larger or you have more exposure or maybe you’ve had some claims, the policy per attorney might get up to between $5,000 on a per attorney basis and then in some rare extenduity and circumstances higher than that, depending if you’re like an IP attorney or you’ve had some claims or you do some class action stuff, Those are higher exposure things. And we’ve seen some policies get up to around say, ten grand or more per attorney. But for most law firms who are probably listening to this, it is give or take, say $2500 to $3,500 a year. And this way you know that if things go wrong, it’s very easy to have that insurance carry in your pocket. The other thing is that people are often think about malpractice policies for all the right reasons, as if you get sued, but if something happens in terms of bar complaints or disciplinary proceedings and they had for small. Some people who are like in family law or trust in estates who are dealing with individuals. It’s so easy for them to make a complaint against you. And these policies will help you in terms of getting defense counsel for any bar complaint issues. And that happens all the time.

Darren Wurz [00:20:12]:

Yeah, great advice there and that’s good to understand that that’s really not a whole lot of money for peace of mind in that regard, I would think, right?

Brad Barkin [00:20:23]:

I think so too. I mean, easier for me to say you coach these people all the time. I think so many of them are guilty of not running the practice as a business and not thinking about it in that regard. And so they wind up being a little bit foolish, I think, in terms of not wanting to invest in some protection from a risk management perspective. Sure. There’s other facets, too, where that mindset extends to. But from an insurance perspective, we see that all the time.

Darren Wurz [00:20:53]:

Yeah and speaking of running it as a business, earlier you mentioned a business owner’s policy. Maybe you can tell us a little bit more what that is and what that entails.

Brad Barkin [00:21:03]:

Sure. So a business owner’s policy is a policy that’s designed to cover you for general liability and property. And the reason those are packaged together is that so often if you run a small business, you’re just required to carry it. So your landlord makes you carry your landlord makes you carry some kind of insurance policy for general liability, like a slip and fall type of thing. There’s some other things that protects, too, and they also make you carry some stuff for property, like property damage, which can be anything within the four walls of your office, your computer systems, your printers. Most firms these days are running really lean practices. Right. They might have a virtual office, or they might go into a WeWork type space, something along those lines. They don’t really even have that much property, but they might have a landlord that requires it. And so it’s easy enough for them to spend $500 or so. And at mbroker, we can give you those policies very easily. And it seems to be like a check the box kind of issue. Does it respond? Do people have claims and that kind of stuff? Sure, of course that happens. But it seems to be just something that is often required by some kind of third party. So when that happens, we’re happy to provide that. And that’s usually when we see firms getting that kind of policy.

Darren Wurz [00:22:24]:

Okay. Yeah. Now let’s think about the business continuation as well. Do you do much with disability insurance? And what can you tell us about that?

Brad Barkin [00:22:36]:

Yeah, we actually don’t in terms of that tends to be for disability and health care. We can help and we can help point people in the right direction. We do have avenues for key man insurance or key person insurance, which that tends to be popular among some, I would say Savvy or law firms. I’m kind of surprised that some firms don’t buy that a little more often, but with personage.

Darren Wurz [00:23:01]:

Yeah, let’s break that down. Explain to us what those are.

Brad Barkin [00:23:04]:

Yeah. So health insurance and disability is a separate animal in terms of that. There are great brokers out there that will help you with your employee benefits and managing those types of things. Key person insurance kind of falls underneath health insurance a little bit, but if a firm recognizes that there is one or two people in there that are kind of, let’s say, the rainmakers of the organization, and if those people were to become dead or disabled, that the entity would have trouble sustaining itself. Right. So the entity can buy a key person insurance policy so that if one of the, that’s the triggering event. And if that happened, there would be a payout. So the entity could subside, the entity could use that money to either pay off the other partners or people within the organization. It could use that money to go out and try to find somebody to replace that key person who’s no longer but that’s what that’s there for. So you’ll see a lot of Mbroker has a lot of technology companies as well. That’s actually our biggest vertical are law firms and tech. And you’ll see a lot of technology founders buying key person insurance policies because they are kind of the brains behind that operation. And we’ll see some law firms doing the same thing.

Darren Wurz [00:24:34]:

Yeah, and I think that makes a lot of sense, especially if you’re a law firm owner and you have a team and it’s your name on the door, you are the key person. And there does need to be some protections there.

Brad Barkin [00:24:50]:

That’s right. Yeah. We’re not always pushing it in terms of a key insurance product, but certainly that’s available. Like I said, the key ones that we tend to purchase or tend to promote are professional liability, the business owners policy, cyber liability, then employment practices liability as well. And I should have gone back to the business owner’s policy. The other thing that I failed to mention there is that it can cover you for auto. Like if people are driving around and they get into some kind of a car wreck and they’re doing it on behalf of the firm, that business owner’s policy can respond to that too. So that’s kind of another critical point and why sometimes people will buy those business owners policies.

Darren Wurz [00:25:33]:

Absolutely. Now I’m curious what you think in terms of the future of insurance. Obviously cyber is becoming a much bigger thing and now we have AI to think about and lots of other things. Where do you see kind of the insurance industry going and kind of some of the future trends that law firm owners need to think about and be aware of?

Brad Barkin [00:25:54]:

Sure. Well, it’s not going away. Unfortunately, we see some of the claims, actually a lot of the claims to come through and they come fast. So what some people I think, fail to understand is that the law firm insurance carriers, especially in my practice, they really aren’t making any money or if they are, razor thin margins. So one of the things that we’re trying to do at mbroker, and I think you’ll see other people trying to do this as well, is we try to run our organization a little more lean and reduce some of the traditional overhead costs and pass those savings along to the law firm owner. And we do that using technology. That’s the best way we can achieve it. I think you’ll see other carriers trying to start to do the same thing to try to win market share, which is great for the law firm. What’s not as good for the law firm is that the prices, absent of using technology like this, the prices will probably still continue to rise because the claims continue to rise. And defending those cases is only getting more expensive between expert witnesses, discovery and things of that nature, and the settlements get larger. So I guess that’s not going anywhere. We do see people spending more money on cyber liability insurance again, because as I mentioned a little bit earlier, those claims are just rising as well. And I think that I say this to people all the time. If you run a small law firm, I don’t know, two attorneys or gets, like, five or six attorneys, and if you had a cyber claim happen to you, and you went and told your partners that we didn’t carry cyber insurance because the $2,000 or whatever was too expensive, and now we got to pay this claim out of our own pockets, I think they’d look at you like you’re crazy. It seems to me like it’s a fiduciary responsibility of a law firm owner to have that coverage in place because good lawyering can protect a lot of things on a malpractice claim, but it’s really hard to protect against a cyber claim. And even if you talk to the people who do the upfront stuff on firewalls and things of this nature to protect your firm, they’ll even tell you you should get insurance policy because the claims can still happen. So in terms of the future, I think cyber is not going anywhere. I think malpractice is for sure going to be there. And in some states, like California, law firm owners need to be a little more vigilant about buying stuff to protect against employment related issues. Like employment related issues for law firms in California is horrific. Almost all carriers lose money on that because the claims are so bad and it’s so employee friendly. So I think that’s going to be the case too. Maybe some of those costs will come down, but in a state like California, it’s not looking like it.

Darren Wurz [00:28:37]:

Great. Yeah. Really important things to think about as you’re growing your practice and growing your business. Well, unfortunately, we’re coming near to the end of our time. Brad, this has been really good stuff. I just want to ask you, is there anything else you’d like to add, any additional information that you feel law firm owners need to be aware about as they manage risk and navigate the world of insurance?

Brad Barkin [00:28:58]:

Yeah, sure. So insurance is a peace of mind product, right? I think it’s really important to get somebody on your side who can explain things to you and where you can have confidence that the policy is going to respond when you need it to. And also that you can. Be confident you’re getting a good deal. There’s a lot of providers out there. You can do quick Google searching, you can ask around and you might get all kinds of different answers. So I would say be diligent about doing your research and you don’t have to spend that much time on it, but get somebody in your corner who can do a good job for you where you know you’re getting a good deal and they know you’re looking out for your interest. The last thing is that it’s really hard to manage as a law firm owner, a lot of different vendors, and for whatever reason in insurance, it’s always been really hard to find one vendor who can just manage all your risks and all those policies. We see a lot of people coming to us because we can do all the insurance right. So if you can find somebody where you can just offload all the insurance things to that entity or that company or that person and just say, like, hey, take care of this for me so I can go practice law, that’s a win, right? This way you’re not getting your time sucked up by having to renew all these different policies all these different times a year and not having any clue as to how well you’re protected. If you can put all your policies and all your insurance administration with one group or one person, think that’s a win. Find somebody you can trust where they’re making sure you’re taken care of and that the carrier is going to be in your corner.

Darren Wurz [00:30:25]:

Yeah, that’s great advice. I love that. And I recommend that to my clients to use a know, somebody who can shop around for you, who can compare different companies, who know, give you a wide view of all kinds of different options that are out there. I got one last question for you, Brad, something we ask all of our clients. You know we talk a lot about retirement planning on this show. So I’m just curious, what does your dream retirement look like?

Brad Barkin [00:30:53]:

My dream retirement? Well, it won’t be probably selling lawyers insurance for all the years to come. Maybe if I’m lucky, things will go well, my kids will get out of college, and I’ll be hanging out with them somewhere on a beach, and maybe they’ll be paying for my meals and my drinks, be paying for theirs. That would be a win.

Darren Wurz [00:31:11]:

That sounds good. All right

Darren Wurz [00:31:12]:

And lastly, would you share with our audience how they can find out more about you and your company or get in touch with you if they have questions?

Brad Barkin [00:31:21]:

Sure thing. So our company is mbroker. You can very easily go to Mbroker.com or Mbroker.com slash law. You’ll see a page there specifically dedicated to law firms. We’ve got a great team of people. So if you navigate to that page and try to find us, you’ll either hit me or one of the folks on my team. If you want to find me specifically, you can find me on LinkedIn. That’s very clean and easy. It’s a LinkedIn.com slash. Bradbarkin. My name or my email address is very simply Brad@mbroker.com.

Darren Wurz [00:31:55]:

Great. Sounds good. Thanks so much. And thank you for joining us today. On this episode of The Lawyer Millionaire, go check out your insurance policies and make sure you have the coverage you need. Make sure your dream is protected. If you want to learn more about us, check out our website, thelawyormillionaire.com. There you can find free resources and webinars, grab a copy of my book, or even schedule a time to chat with me about your own financial goals and creating a plan to make them happen. If you enjoyed today’s episode, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode packed with useful advice and expertise for law firm owners just like you. We also invite you to leave a review and share The Lawyer Millionaire with your friends and colleagues who might benefit from our discussions. Together, let’s empower more law firm owners to achieve even greater levels of success and freedom. Now take what you learned today and go make your dreams a reality. I’m your host, Darren Wurz, and I’ll see you next time.