Time doesn’t stand still and we are not getting any younger.  At least I’m not.  Eventually we all will at some point retire.  As lawyers in the private practice of law, you need to prepare for retirement from an insurance perspective.  

When you retire, you want to make sure that you take the proper steps to maintain the coverage you paid for in all the years prior.  You do this by securing what is known as tail coverage referred to as an Extended Reporting Provision.  Tail coverage will allow you to report future claims filed against you stemming from professional services you provided to clients prior to your retirement.  Hence the term tail coverage.  

Tail coverage is an essential piece of your retirement plan and it is not inexpensive (cheap).  The cost of tail coverage is usually based upon a percentage of the last premium you paid prior to retirement.  Cost can be upwards of 300% of the last premium paid. For example if the last premium you paid for your policy prior to retirement was $2000, your tail coverage could cost as much as $6000. 

It is important to note and to plan for that most carriers will offer a free retirement tail providing that you satisfy certain requirements.  Different carriers have different requirements however most stipulate that you must have been insured with the carrier for three consecutive years to be eligible for a free retirement tail.  Therefore you need to check with your broker and confirm what the requirements are in order to obtain a free retirement tail.  

Do not wait until the last minute to check as we are talking time requirements of at least three years and be careful as to not change carriers when you are within that three year time frame.  And if you do have to change carriers when in that retirement time frame, consult with your broker on what you will need to do to obtain a free tail with the new carrier.  There may be options where you won’t have to start over at year 1 of being continuously insured.

Remember, when you’re getting close to retirement, ask questions, get answers and confirm that you qualify for a free tail or at a minimum can purchase a tail. It will help provide for a secure retirement and possibly add a little more cash to your retirement savings.

Professional Services On Behalf of the Named Insured, that term or similar term is in most, not all, but most lawyers malpractice insurance policies.  It is intended to limit the policy coverage to lawyers in the law firm that are providing legal services to clients of the law firm only. Keep in mind that the name of the law firm is usually the name of the Named Insured listed on the policy.  

This term usually is a good thing for the law firm in that it does limit the exposure and coverage to the law firm business.  It can however be quite a surprise to any firm lawyers working outside the law firm in a “side” venture and moonlighting situation.  The policy will not cover professional services performed for anyone that is not a client of the Named Insured/Law Firm.  

There are instances where lawyers have worked in a law firm and also maintain a solo part time law practice away from the law firm.  Thinking that they had malpractice insurance coverage with the law firm, did not bother to purchase a separate policy for their part time solo work.  They did not realize they had no coverage until they were sued for work performed in their part time solo capacity.  Ouch!  That is a hard lesson.  

This situation can also occur if when working in a firm the lawyer agrees to provide legal service for a friend or family member and doesn’t run the business through the firm or sign the client up as a client of the firm.  

So check who is the Named Insured on your legal malpractice policy.  Make sure it is correct, again it is usually the name of the law firm. Be certain that all lawyers in the firm know that they are NOT or may not be covered by the law firm policy for legal services they perform for others who are not client’s of the firm. 

“Amateurs hack systems, professionals hack people.” – Bruce Schneier

What is social engineering? 

Social engineering occurs when somebody acts like something that they’re not to get information from you so they can better themselves. We’ve heard a lot of stories that involve law firms and wire transfer fraud.

Common Social Engineering Schemes Aimed At Attorneys

There was a firm in North Carolina and they received a phone call, supposedly, from the bank saying, “We noticed some interesting activity on your account. I just want to verify we’re talking to the right person, what’s your username and password?” That firm gave the person on the phone their bank username and password. The bank said, “We’re gonna send you a code. We just want to make sure that you are who you are – let us know what the code is and then we’re going to talk about the issues with your account.” So instead, unbeknownst to the law firm, the people on the phone actually signed into their bank, initiated a wire transfer, and sent them the code needed for the wire transfer. So the law firm received the code and provided it to the people on the phone, they put it in, and then they went on to just have a fake conversation about what was wrong with their account. At the end, they said it just turned out to be an internal error and everything was fine. And 30 minutes later, the firm finds out that there was a wire transfer that they didn’t know about that they didn’t authorize. And in fact, it ended up being the person on the phone that allowed it all to happen.

This is a very common thing that we’ve been hearing more and more lately and it is a very common social engineering scheme aimed at attorneys.

Another one is, they’ll call you and appear like they are from a nonprofit, and they’ll try to, again, get some sort of wire transfer normally.

And then the final one that’s really, really common is they’ll send emails to you as your client. So it’s actually quite easy to appear to send an email as somebody else. It’s called email spoofing. An eight year old could do it, it’s so easy. They’ll send emails to you as your client, and they’ll say, “Hey, are you at the office? Can we send a wire out today? I’m busy, just go ahead and do it and email me when it’s done.” Anytime you get anything like that from your clients, you will need to put something in place where there’s some sort of two factor authentication. Something as simple as if they email you, you have to talk to them on the phone before proceeding. Having processes in place to combat social engineering is, again, part of that knowledge that needs to happen.

Social engineering is definitely an issue, and attorneys are one of the main people that they’ll go after because you have access to such important information.

Is This Really Happening?

I can tell you that, obviously, there have been claims, and whether they’re funds, transfer funds, transfers, or just hacks into the system to try to get information such as social security numbers, ein numbers, birth date health records of clients, it’s happening all the time, and it happens everywhere. The smaller law firms that don’t have a ton of money to spend on high priced security systems out there, they’re considered low hanging fruit or as I said, the easy targets for cyber criminals so be careful.

In the past five years, banks have spent about $90 billion on guarding against social engineering. They’re making it a lot harder to get into their information.

In 2022, cyber criminals have sent about 3.3 billion phishing messages and caused over 4000 data breaches. This exposed about 22 billion personal records. 

What is Phishing?

Phishing is a cybercrime in which a target or targets are contacted by email, telephone or text message by someone posing as a legit institution to lure individuals into providing sensitive info. And such as PII banking and credit card details and passwords. The information is then used to access important accounts and can result in identity theft and financial loss.

How do we fight phishing? 

Knowledge

Humans are the number one cause of phishing schemes to succeed. So knowledge is definitely going to be one of your big tools. Make your employees knowledgeable about phishing attacks, the common phishing attacks that are happening now and answer any questions that they might have about these different security issues.

Safeguards

Over 50% of the attacks were caused by humans, but that other 40 something percent was caused by issues in the system. So having safeguards in place, such as a really good spam filter, can help fight against phishing.

And what’s interesting is, Google actually has better safeguards in place than Microsoft Office. So organizations that use Office 365, are more than three times as likely to experience a business email compromise when compared to Google Gmail for business. 

One reason that’s probably true is because Microsoft only has access to their small amount of data that is Microsoft specific, whereas Google has access to 90% of the world’s data on the internet. So it would make sense that the Google spam filter and their email filters are much, much stronger, because they have access to so much more data.

Ways to spot phishing schemes

It contains an offer, that’s, that’s too good to be true

If you’ve ever received an email that said “click here to claim your $500 reward”, they want you to go to a website and put in your name and your bank account so they can deposit that $500 reward. 

Language that’s urgent, alarming or threatening

In one week, we had three different clients send an email that says the subject line is urgent, your site has been hacked. And the email goes on to say, deliver $3,000 in Bitcoin, or we will take your website offline, and put something else up in its place. So anytime you receive anything like that, that’s definitely a big key to spotting phishing. 

Poorly crafted writing with misspellings and bad grammar

Now, this next one, it’s not as prevalent anymore with AI becoming a lot more in tune. More of, you know, chat, GBT, stuff like that. You and I know that no financial institution and no attorney is going to send out anything that has bad grammar. So that’s definitely a way to spot a phishing email. 

Greetings that are ambiguous or very generic

You may receive an email that says hello gentleman, or welcome lady. Ignore these.

Requests to send personal information. 

This happens a lot with people pretending to be banks, or pretending to be PayPal. They’ll say, oh, there’s an issue with your account, click here to sign in and put in your financial information so we can verify it. Don’t do that. PayPal and banks have come out and said, we will never send you an email that’s like that, so that’s definitely an email to ignore. 

Urgency to click on unfamiliar hyperlinks or an attachment

A real website for a bank, credit card company, or other business won’t look or feel like it’s trying too hard. You won’t find important messages spread all over these sites. If you go to a site and it seems to have a lot of urgent messages that don’t seem to fit, you should check the URL to make sure you’re in the right place. Phishers use this kind of urgency to make it more likely that people will share sensitive information quickly and willingly.

Strange or erupt business requests

In this type of phishing attack, the victim is sent an email from an address they know, like the CEO, the Human Resources Manager, or the IT support department. The email tells the victim that they need to act quickly and transfer money, update information about their employees, or install a new app on their computer.

Fuzzy or low resolution images

A company will never send you an email where their logo looks bad. If their logo looks bad or fuzzy, whoever sent it didn’t have access to the high resolution version of it. So it’s not from them. 

The sending email address doesn’t match the company where it’s coming from

So if they say, Hi, this is PayPal, but the address says PayPal1234@outlook.com, those two don’t mesh. And so, you know it’s not from PayPal.

What does a phishing email look like?

As an example, we have this email where you can see this isn’t the actual PayPal logo, it’s a little bit different. It’s missing a few features. And then it says response required. Then you can see here it says service.epaypal@outlook.com. The purpose of this email is they want you to click this login and put in your username and password, so they have your paypal username and password.

Common phishing schemes

Account deactivation

Compromised credit card

Funds Transfer

Social media requests

Google Docs fake login 

IT support request 

Social engineering

Questions about anything in this article?  Contact Stacey Ivol at 412-563-2106 or email her at sivol@integrityfirstins.biz

When it comes time to purchase or renew a legal malpractice policy, most people focus on price, which is not a bad thing. If it’s not the top priority, it is certainly in the top five. There are, however, other items that should be included on that list. Today, I want to give you my top items on my list in no order of importance. 

1. Prior acts coverage. Why is that important? Most claims filed against lawyers stem from professional services they provided five or more years ago. You don’t want a policy that excludes that type of claim.

2. Definition of professional services. Many lawyers wear many hats when providing professional services, acting as an arbitrator, mediator, trustee, Guardian, and title agent, just to name a few. Make sure that these services are not excluded in the policy that you purchase. 

3. Speaking of exclusions, number three is exclusions. I’ve long said that if you’re going to read only one section of the policy, read the exclusion section. At least this gives you some idea of what is not going to be covered under the policy. I have seen policies that have less than 10 exclusions. I’ve seen policies that have more than 25 exclusions. I’m not saying that the policy with 25 exclusions is any worse than the one that has 10 exclusions, but you need to read them and make sure if any of them apply to you. 

4. Extended reporting periods or extended reporting coverages. It’s commonly referred to as tail coverage. In the event that you quit practicing law, or you retire from the private practice of law, this provision will allow you to purchase an endorsement that allows you to report future claims that are filed against you for services that you performed in the past that would have been covered under your last policy. 

5. We’re going to come full circle and back to price. Price is important. Nobody wants to overpay for a policy. But please remember your objective when you first started the process. Your objective should have been to find a policy that provides the coverage you need and protects both you and your client all at a reasonable cost. 

There you have it, my top five list for now.

If you don’t have any writing about what work you did, it’s pretty difficult to justify the work that you did perform.

I suggest this to everybody. Even if you’re not billing hourly it’s easier to write down what you did because if you get in that situation later, it’s a lot easier to say this is the work I did and I earned that fee; I know that because I wrote it down.

And you don’t need to, but if you write down and send the work that you are doing to your client periodically, it’s even better.

Scott Eberle is on several insurance carriers defense panels. He’s been doing this type of work for many years. In my opinion, he’s one of the best presenters of legal malpractice and how to prevent it. So I think you’re in for a treat in terms of taking back some good information that you can implement in your firms.

Meet Scott Eberle

“My name is Scott Eberle, I am an attorney at Burns White in Pittsburgh where my practice focuses on representation of professionals, lawsuits and ethics matters. I’m focused on representation of lawyers in legal malpractice lawsuits, as well as ethics issues either in front of the office of disciplinary Council, or just general ethics consultation. I help attorneys navigate the issues that come up in their practice and I’m able to provide guidance on what you need to do to follow the rules of professional conduct to not get yourself in potential trouble with the disciplinary council.”

With any representation that you enter into make sure that you are adequately identifying who you represent and what you are doing on behalf of that party and that is that that will help you navigate your way and to avoid potential conflict situations.

Scott Eberle is on several insurance carriers defense panels. He’s been doing this type of work for many years. In my opinion, he’s one of the best presenters of legal malpractice and how to prevent it. So I think you’re in for a treat in terms of taking back some good information that you can implement in your firms.

Meet Scott Eberle

“My name is Scott Eberle, I am an attorney at Burns White in Pittsburgh where my practice focuses on representation of professionals, lawsuits and ethics matters. I’m focused on representation of lawyers in legal malpractice lawsuits, as well as ethics issues either in front of the office of disciplinary Council, or just general ethics consultation. I help attorneys navigate the issues that come up in their practice and I’m able to provide guidance on what you need to do to follow the rules of professional conduct to not get yourself in potential trouble with the disciplinary council.”

Welcome to level up your cybersecurity in October program from integrity first Corporation. It’s week three, and we’re going to talk about updating your software and the importance of it. 

Hackers can exploit vulnerabilities in unpatched software. When new software updates come out to the public, it allows everyone, especially hackers, to learn about the weaknesses that were there and take advantage of them. 

Public Knowledge of those holes leave you and your organization as easy prey. So what should you do? You should update or patch your software. That makes you less vulnerable to security risks. If an update becomes available on your device, update it properly. Better yet, enable your phone, desktop, laptop to auto update, which will automatically install anything security wise that you might need automatically as soon as it’s available to you. 

In the case of a Red Cross breach as an example, they did not install an update fast enough and gave hackers access to over 50,000 people’s data. This is just one example of many malicious software attacks that happen every day and a perfect reason why you should update your software.

Join us next week for level four!

In this article, we’re going to review what to do if you forgot your password to the INF ShareFile portal. The first thing to do is not worry, it only takes a few minutes to reset the password.

To start that process, go to integrityfirstins.sharefile.com and click on the forgot password link. Now, you’ll want to enter your email address in the field.

The email address that you’re going to want to use is the email address that is associated with your legal malpractice application. That’s most likely the email address that INF used to give you access to the portal. Once you have your email in, click the I’m not a robot, and go through the rigmarole that Google is going to require to prove that you are in fact human. Click Send.

This should result in a Reset Password email being sent to your email address.

Go to your inbox and you might have to do a refresh to see that email come in. Click on that email and you can see that there is a reset your password now link contained within the text of the message.

If you do not receive the reset ShareFile password email in your inbox, you’ll definitely want to check your spam folder, there is a chance that your email provider may look upon the reset ShareFile password email as spam.

Click on the reset your password now link.

You can see for security purposes, INF has a few password requirements. The password needs to have at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, two numbers, a special character and it has to be at least 12 characters in length. So select a new password that you’ll want to use for the portal.

Make sure that you typed them the same and then click on Reset password. You can see ShareFile will confirm your account password has been reset. Now if you want to sign in to the portal, click on back to sign in. Put in your email address, put in that new password and click on Sign In. 

If you have any questions about password reset process, email Stacey Ivol at sivol@integrityfirstins.biz or call at 412-563-2106.