In one of our earlier conversations, you described litigation risk as your favorite subject. Why is that?

It's what I live and breathe every day. That's really what I spend almost all of my working hours, and most of my waking hours as well, working on.

My understanding is that there are really two sides to the litigation insurance coin. Can you explain why that is?

Those are a defense-side solution, called adverse judgment insurance, and a plaintiff-side solution called judgment preservation insurance.

On the defense side, we're able to really solve otherwise unsolvable problems for our clients. They're stuck on litigation, and it's getting in the way of something they want to do, whether that's the litigation is depressing their share price, or it's forcing them to keep a significant amount of funds in a reserve account.

On the plaintiff side, when you win a big judgment, you win a $100 million dollar trial verdict or arbitration award, everyone's popping champagne bottles, but when the hangover wears off, you realize that you're not going to see any of that money, potentially, for several years as it winds its way through the appellate process. That money could end up evaporating on appeal, so what we're able to do in these situations is allow the prevailing plaintiff to lock in a certain portion of that judgment.

How common is litigation insurance among legal departments? Why isn't it more so?

I would say it's pretty uncommon and not well known at all. Everybody knows about litigation finance, but they don't know about litigation insurance.

When I came in, it surprised me that it wasn't something everyone knew about it. I think that's a reflection of the fact that it's a new and evolving marketplace. A large part of my role is trying to get the word out about these insurance solutions and all the ways they can help both plaintiffs and defendants, because the biggest thing we're up against is just the lack of knowledge

It's been mentioned earlier in our conversations that litigation risk insurance is becoming a necessary insurance tool for GCs. Why wasn't it already? What's changed?

Even when I look back at two years ago, when I started at Aon, there were fewer insurers that were really in this space, and there were fewer risks they were willing to look at, and they were charging more than they are today.

Historically, these policies have been written very episodically. It's really just been a small handful that have gotten done each year.

I think as we kind of hone our own process and start doing more deals and getting significant policy flow to the insurance markets, our own little sector is really taking off. That's why we're able to do more now than in the past.

Where does Aon come in during that process?

We do our own diligence, what we call "pre-underwriting," where we use our own expertise and background knowledge, and we assess whether we think something is insurable.

Everyone [in Aon's Litigation Risk Group], we're all former practicing litigation attorneys. So when we go out, we're not just sending out to insurers a stack of briefs to read. If you're going to send insurance underwriters very, very dense material that's all legal-ese and case-law citations, it's very hard to wrap their heads around that. So, we really see our role as kind of hand-holding underwriters through that process.

How does your experience as a litigation attorney inform your approach to insurance?

The first thing we do whenever we get a client who's interested in exploring litigation insurance is really dig down into the materials, to really understand what the risk profile of the litigation is.

In terms of cases that come in through the door, we probably have a declination rate that's close to what litigation funders have, because the reality is that the vast majority of things we see are not insurable. We need to be good stewards, and every risk that we send out to market, we need to stand behind as being a good risk. That means we need to ferret out the bad cases.

That's really the key thing all of our litigation experience goes to.

What can GCs wanting to implement litigation risk insurance into what their departments do?

It's really a matter of learning about the coverage, learning how it works and the kinds of cases for which it's appropriate and, when you see those kinds of cases and it's mucking up what you want to do, reaching out to us. What we're able to do is send a significant part of that litigation risk, and transfer it to the insurance market.