Book(let) on Negotiating Your Own Insurance Claim

[Steven Pollack]

First things first. I took a long break from this board to study for the Illinois Bar. I found out last week I passed!

So now I am thinking of practice areas and one came to mind from a prior experience with our house catching fire several years ago. I ended up negotiating our insurance claim and learned many valuable lessons on where your power is when the insurance company seems to be holding all the cards.

There are several options. Negotiate it yourself, hire a public adjuster, or hire an attorney (me). I was a do-it-yourselfer and that worked for me but after paying with sweat and blood, I imagine there are others who would be better off with representation.

What I am thinking about, and the point of this post, is publishing a self-help guide for others who are do-it-yourselfers. I will make this an honest effort. In other words, it will be truly helpful and not just a way to throw everything in randomly to create fear and drive people into my arms.

What I want your advice for is how to market this book(let). One option is to mass print and distribute for free to fire departments and insurance brokers to give to homeowners who they come in contact with. This sets me up as an authority and casts a wide net for my legal services but is expensive.

Another method is to make it available free on a website and let the search engine method carry it to the needed parties. This is less expensive but not as efficient at getting it into the homeowners hands. The last thing the homeowner is likely to do in the first crucial weeks after the fire is to look for this information. On the other hand, I would not distribute the book outside Illinois for free in physical form since it would not benefit my legal practice. The web distribution would therefore be a way for those people to get this information.

Finally, I could publish it for sale. My target market would maybe be fire departments although I am not sure if their mandate goes beyond putting out the fire. Maybe a social service organization but again, the occurrence of fires is pretty random so I doubt many would order these books in advance. When we had our fire the only ones reaching out to us were vulture-like public adjusters.

Any thoughts are welcome.

Steve

[Lauri B]

Hi Steve,
Another option is to try to get an insurance carrier to underwrite it, so they can use it as a marketing tool, as well. They can give it out to agents, use it at home shows and other trade show places, and offer it to their policyholders as a value added. Fire departments are run by municipalities, and that's also an option, although you'll probably end up tangled up in local government beauracracy.

[Steven Pollack]

Hi Nomad,

The thing is, insurance companies do not always act honorably when adjusting the claim. This is the reason I am writing this book, to let the insured know their rights and ways to effectively negotiate AGAINST the insurer.

I doubt, therefore, that the insurance carrier would underwrite a book that is giving their insureds methods to counteract the carrier's negotiating power.

Maybe I am reading your suggestion wrong?

Steve

[JanDarby]

Nolo Press does a lot of really quite good do-it-yourself law books. Not that I, as a lawyer, would generally recommend that anyone do it him/herself in the legal world, without any professional supervision, but the Nolo books I've seen have been quite well done, providing a basic overview and checklists. I did a quick search of their site, and they don't seem to have a book that covers your topic.

Anyway, you might want to pitch your idea to them (no idea what their guidelines are; there might be something at Nolo.com), with a standard non-fiction proposal and highlighting that you've actually done this particular process yourself, in a situation where you were technically a layperson, while having more knowledge than a typical layperson (assuming you were in law school at the time), which gives you special expertise to write the book.

Alternatively, you might take a look at their books to see how they break things down into really, really simple terminology.

JD

[Steven Pollack]

Jan,

That is an interesting idea. I think that might be the better way to go.

Steve

[Steven Pollack]

I wonder if getting published would be better than treating this as a promotional marketing piece I can send out to potential influencers like fire departments.

Would Nolo allow promotion of a law practice as part of the forward or book jacket cover?

[JanDarby]

I'm not entirely sure how this will get you business. You're teaching people how to do your job.

Well, I know, and you probably know, that DIY-ers in the legal field often end up creating a bigger (more expensive) mess than if they'd started out with proper representation (I've had run-ins with assorted folks practicing law without a license here where I live, where their services offer blank forms and clerical help filling them in, purportedly without any advice on how to fill them, and they actually cost more than what a lawyer would charge, but the clients hat lawyers, so they do wills and trusts this way, and don't have a real clue about what they're doing), but in my experience, they seldom admit that they've created a mess (or may not even know it until it's too late, because they're dead and their will is invalid or will cause huge tax consequences), and either they or their families/heirs end up suffering when the situation is botched.

Anyway, if they pick up the "how to negotiate by myself" pamphlet, they're probably of the "I hate lawyers" persuasion, and will never come to see you. Why not do a "all the reasons you should NOT negotiate by yourself" pamphlet? You won't get DIY'ers coming to see you, but you won't get them anyway. And you can give them checklists for things to do BEFORE a fire, to make your job easier when they do hire you.

JD

[Steven Pollack]

Those are very valid points. I was thinking about how I recently considered forming a 501(c)(3) for the environmental advocacy I engage in. I started researching it and found the whole process to be quite overwhelming. I found a lawyers website where he makes available a free how-to guide. It still seems overwhelming to me and even being a new lawyer I have second thoughts about doing it myself. So that is where the idea of using the how-to manual as bait came from.

Also, negotiating an insurance claim is not totally analogous to entering the legal process pro se because there is no presumption, like in the creation of legal forms or litigation, that people should have representation in the first place. DIY in the insurance claims process is probably the default rather than the exception.

Still, you have a good point about giving away the milk when trying to sell the cow.

[Steven Pollack]

I just finished the first draft of the first chapter. I plan to edit and then submit it to Nolo Press with a detailed outline for the rest of the book. Are there any other publishers I should consider?

Thanks,

Steven

[JanDarby]

West, of course. Except it would have to be slanted to, say, the novice practitioner instead of the layperson, although as you found out with the corporations situation, that there's not a huge jump between the two (except that the lawyer is better equipped, usually, to be logical). And who's West's competitor? I'm blanking on the company's name. They do Am Jur, and the like.

I'm heading over to the local courthouse's law library this afternoon. If I remember ("Ha!" you're thinking. "Fat chance, with a sieve for a brain like she has."), I'll see if there's another DIY publisher there.

Actually the "novice practitioner" market for negotiating fire losses might be worth pursuing. Who does the CLE in your state? You might put together a workshop presentation and propose it to them, and put together an abbreviated hand-out that you'd use, and that would then be expanded in your book. It's been a while (as my leaky memory would suggest) since I took the basic "how to practice [insert specialty, like real estate or divorce or civil litigation] law" classes (which are different, of course, from law school classes), but there might be room in there for your topic. If not a workshop on its own, perhaps as part of a larger picture, like a day-long session on various types of insurance law (litigating auto and homeowners claims, with a little bit by you about fire claims).

JD

[Steven Pollack]

Originally Posted by JanDarby

Actually the "novice practitioner" market for negotiating fire losses might be worth pursuing. Who does the CLE in your state? You might put together a workshop presentation and propose it to them, and put together an abbreviated hand-out that you'd use, and that would then be expanded in your book. It's been a while (as my leaky memory would suggest) since I took the basic "how to practice [insert specialty, like real estate or divorce or civil litigation] law" classes (which are different, of course, from law school classes), but there might be room in there for your topic.
JD

The Chicago Bar Association does some CLE. The rule just went into effect so the CLE offerings seem to be available from all over the place. Of course there must be a certifying organization.

Would these CLE classes be part of my effort to sell the book and to generate referrals or does it pay well?

Thanks,

Steve

[JanDarby]

Would these CLE classes be part of my effort to sell the book and to generate referrals or does it pay well?

I don't really know much about the CLE classes, except that I had to take bunches of them over the years for insurance reasons, and most of them were dreary. I'm fairly sure the speakers were hoping to get exposure and referrals and be able to say "I'm an expert, as evidenced by my speaking on this panel/workshop," more than getting a good income from teaching, but I never actually looked into it.

I did ask the law librarian about non-lawyer-oriented legal publishers, and, besides Nolo, she really likes Oceana Publications, out of Dobbs Ferry, NY. I assume a little googling would get you more info about them. Note that it's Oceana, with an A at the end; that's not a typo. I have no idea about their catalogue or specialties, so you might want to see if they'd be right for you, but at least I can confirm that they can get their books into law libraries, even small ones with limited acquisitions. The one book she showed me was a small volume on a very specialized subject.

Good luck.

JD

[Aesposito]

Originally Posted by Steven Pollack

Finally, I could publish it for sale. My target market would maybe be fire departments although I am not sure if their mandate goes beyond putting out the fire.

Hi Steve,

Unfortunately, you are right there. I've been a firefighter a long time and beyond putting out the fire and sometimes investigating the cause, our mandate doesn't go much beyond that.

But we do sometimes get involved in referring people to social service agencies, etc. after they are left homeless by fire. If anything, I'd think the Red Cross people and the social service agencies might be the direction you'll want to look, since they are the ones finding shelter, etc for these people after they are kicked out of their homes.

Audrey