The 19th century writer Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that a good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws himself on your part so heartily that he can get you out of a scrape.

Sounds apt, but the problem for insurers is that finding one that fits Emerson's definition can be more work than the case itself. But to use another famous saying, necessity is the mother of invention, and so came about the Council on Ethical Billing (CEB), a newly formed organization that seeks to create a repository of trained and qualified insurance defense attorneys across the U.S for insurers to consult.

"I've spent 20 years in risk management, and what I've found was working as the corporate risk manager, it was always difficult to find good insurance defense organizations and attorneys," said Adam Potter, who is executive director of CEB. "The overall goal of the organization is to identify, train, and certify insurance defense firms and attorneys. We are developing a resource directory so that when insurers need to appoint defense attorneys, they can go to our database and know that an attorney listed there has been nominated, taken the training, and received our certification."