Company History
Lawyers professional liability insurance provides lawyers with indemnity and defense costs protection in connection with claims that may arise from acts, errors, or omissions allegedly committed by a lawyer when providing professional services to a client. Equally important, it provides the insured lawyer with the financial ability to immediately respond to a client's losses when the error or omission and resulting cause is undisputed. Florida Lawyers Mutual's primary objective is to provide to qualified attorneys practicing in Florida a financially sound, stable and perpetual source of lawyers professional liability insurance.
During the early 1980s, the commercial insurers either stopped offering lawyers professional liability policies or imposed dramatic and prohibitive premium increases. The Florida Bar, concerned with these circumstances, believed it was in the public interest for Florida attorneys to have access to professional liability insurance and, to that end, in 1987, The Florida Bar created Florida Lawyers Mutual Insurance Company. After creating the mutual company entity, assembling a board of directors and hiring the staff, The Florida Bar unconditionally divested its ownership and terminated all operational management and control of the Company. For more details on the initial capitalization of the Company: " Florida Lawyers Mutual Pays Back Those Who Helped Capitalize the Company," The Florida Bar News, April 30, 2006.
The Company is owned by its insured Florida lawyers rather than non-lawyer shareholder investors. The mutual form of ownership gives policyholders the right to participate in the management policies of the Company by electing the Board of Directors. In 1997, the Company joined together with other Bar-related insurance companies to form Lawyers Reinsurance Company, a Vermont-based captive reinsurance company. The formation of this company is the logical extension of the vision all the Bar-related companies had when they were formed, i.e., to take their future into their own hands.
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