SWITCHING LEGAL MALPRACTICE INSURANCE CARRIERS

While claims‑made policies don’t lock you into one insurer, you do need to handle the transition carefully to avoid creating a coverage gap. The key is to make sure your new insurer matches your current retroactive coverage date, which keeps your past work covered under the new policy. If the new carrier won’t match that date, you’ll need to buy tail coverage from your current carrier to preserve coverage for your past work. If you confirm the retro date and report any known issues to your current carrier before switching, moving carriers is a straightforward process. So, yes, if you’re unhappy with your current carrier’s clarity or responsiveness, it’s entirely reasonable to explore other insurers who offer the level of support and communication you expect.

Prior‑acts coverage is the part of a claims‑made malpractice policy that determines how far back in time your coverage reaches. When you switch carriers, your new insurer must match your existing prior‑acts date for your past work to remain covered. If they don’t, coverage for everything you handled before the new effective date is lost unless you purchase tail coverage from your previous carrier.

Tail coverage and prior‑acts coverage are related but not the same thing. Prior‑acts coverage protects your past work while you still have an active malpractice policy, and tail coverage protects your past work after your policy ends. So, if your new carrier is willing to match your old policy’s retroactive coverage date, your historical matters stay insured under your new policy. If your new carrier is unwilling to match that date, the only way to maintain coverage for your past work is to purchase tail coverage, which simply gives you extra time to report claims to your previous carrier after your old policy lapses.

The retroactive coverage date is the earliest point in time your malpractice policy will cover your legal work, and it’s crucial because it determines whether your past work is covered. Any act, error, or omission that happened on or after that date can be covered if a claim is later made while your policy is active. When switching carriers, your new insurer must match your existing retroactive coverage date to keep your historical work protected. If they reset it to the date your new policy goes into effect, coverage for everything you handled before that reset date is lost unless you buy tail coverage from your previous carrier.

When an attorney leaves a firm, the firm’s malpractice policy generally continues to insure this attorney’s past work done for the firm, because most claims‑made policies define “insured” to include former attorneys for acts performed while they worked there. However, this attorney is no longer insured for any legal work performed after the departure, so he or she must secure their own malpractice policy to cover work that will be done post departure. The only major risk comes if the firm later dissolves or stops carrying insurance. At that point, if the firm fails to purchase a firm‑level tail, all past work done at the firm to include matters handled by attorneys who have already left, loses protection once the firm’s final policy lapses. To safeguard their own prior work in that situation, at the time of departure the departing attorney may be able to buy an individual tail if the firm’s policy allows it.