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What We Do

We minimize risk and save costs.

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Risk arises from how a product is prepared and how a product is perceived.  Good judges and juries evaluate a product based on the answer to pretty much one question: "Does the company care about people like me?"  If the answer is “yes,” the company wins.  If the answer is “no,” then the company gets clobbered. 

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We work with our clients to  increase the likelihood that the answer will be “yes.”

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We work before an occurrence to minimize the risk of an occurrence.  We work after an occurrence to minimize its costs--financial, reputational, and practical--to everyone involved.  We take a hard look at how things are.  We consider how they ought to be.  We develop plans for change.  And we help implement that change.

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Different clients have different structures and different needs.  Some are large and established.  Some are new to a field or to a market.  Some may feel a need to examine and reform dated and sclerotic practices.  Others may have have growing market share, but no infrastructure to manage claims and cases.  Others may have particular claims and cases that keep managers up at night and warrant a "fresh eyes" reassessment.  

We help kinds of organizations meet all kinds of needs.

R&D

We know how engineers can get into and stay out of trouble.  We advise engineers on best practices to minimize the risk of product liability.  We train engineers on the principles that should guide their work.  Principles are the foundation of every law, regulation, and standard.  Those principles are just as important as physics, mechanics, chemistry, and electronics.  If a product’s development is principled, the risk of an occurrence is reduced.

 

How a product is perceived is as important as how it is produced.  How a product is perceived depends in part upon how it is presented.  Products are presented through physical evidence, documentary evidence, and testimonial evidence.

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We help engineers and management with:

  • Regulatory compliance

  • Engineering standard development and compliance

  • Product liability assessments

    • Negligence/reasonable care

    • Risk/utility

    • Consumer expectations

    • Merchantability

  • Design and testing decisions

  • Fitment decisions

  • Decisions concerning the deployment of new technologies

  • Supplier relations

    • Testing​

    • Documentation

    • Indemnity/risk allocation

    • Insurance

  • Reporting

  • Review of technical papers and presentations

  • Communications

  • Document retention/management

Sales, Marketing and Advertising

A product isn't worth making unless it gets sold.  A product doesn't get sold unless it's marketed and advertised.  We use our experience to help companies with manuals, warnings, and instructions.  We help implement and execute prudent plans for marketing and advertising.  We train companies on how to review content.  We help increase the chances of a pleasant consumer experience, and we help reduce the risk of adversity.

  • Manual review

  • Instruction review

  • Labeling review

  • Warnings review

  • Warranty review

  • Marketing review

  • Advertising review

  • Distribution
  • Retail sale

Insurance

Very, very few companies can and should bear all of their risk alone. Those that have tried have often wished they hadn't.  Placing and managing insurance on one's own is fraught unless one has long, broad experience.  We help companies with this.

 

Insurers can predict risk to some extent, but they cannot perceive actual risk until it has already materialised.  We help insurers see over horizons and around corners. We help them foresee problems before they arise.

We bring considerable experience to our clients' aid, particularly through our operations in London and Europe, homes to both primary and excess carriers.   Our expertise includes:

  • Scoping

  • Negotiations

    • Carrier selection​

    • Coverage scope

    • Exclusion management

    • Premiums

  • Annual reviews​

  • Reserve setting and review

  • SIR management

  • Excess carrier relations

  • Coverage disputes

  • Renewals

Claims and Cases

If you build it, they will sue. That is the way of the world.  Certainly in the U.S.  Increasingly in other countries.  We help legal departments prepare for, manage, and learn from the inevitable.  

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We help legal departments shift from responsive to proactive.  We help them reduce costs by increasing claim and case handling efficiencies, and by informing other departments of lessons learned from claims and cases.  We also help companies present a credible trial threat so that they are not perceived by the plaintiff bar as fat sitting ducks.  We have worked with dozens of legal departments across industries and continents.  We have seen what works and what doesn’t.  We can bring to a single company the lessons learned from other companies and other occurrences.  We regularly provide advice on:

  • Training (field investigators, safety office, consumer affairs)

  • Field investigations

  • Root cause analyses

  • Individual claims and cases--"fresh eyes"

  • Pattern litigation

  • Class actions

  • Indemnity (suppliers, distributors)

  • Selection and management of lead, local, and appellate counsel

  • Defense themes

  • Defense strategies & tactics

  • Document production

  • Written discovery

  • Witness preparation

  • Case evaluations

  • Mediations

  • Negotiations

  • Motions practice

  • Pretrial strategy

  • Jury research

  • Trial preparation

  • Trial management

  • Preserving error

  • Appellate strategies

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