Overview
This role provides executive leadership and ownership for the organization's outside counsel litigation portfolio across all Property & Casualty lines of business. The position is responsible for implementing the strategy of panel counsel partnerships, managing outside counsel, overseeing legal budgets, guiding case resolution, and ensuring compliance with organizational standards and jurisdictional requirements. It involves managing outcomes using data and analytics to improve results and partnering closely with Claims, the Legal Department, and Senior Leadership to deliver efficient, defensible, and cost-effective litigation outcomes that protect policyholders and the organization's financial and reputational interests.
Responsibilities
Outside Counsel Management
- Select, evaluate, and manage relationships with outside defense counsel and legal vendors.
- Negotiate fee agreements, alternative fee arrangements (AFAs), and performance expectations.
- Conduct counsel performance reviews, including trial preparation, litigation strategy, cost management, and results achieved.
- Ensure counsel compliance with litigation guidelines and billing standards.
- Develop a regular cadence of end-to-end quality review of firms on the panel.
- Onboard new firms and remove underperforming firms.
- Create and use KPIs, metrics, and data analytics to assess firm performance.
Operational & Financial Stewardship
- Develop and manage litigation guidelines, including legal spend forecasting and cost-containment initiatives.
- Review cases with litigation budgets over $100K and large-loss reserved cases as a strategic thought partner to the claims department.
- Leverage analytics and reporting to identify cost drivers, cycle time trends, and opportunities for process improvement.
- Utilize and manage litigation technology tools such as e-billing, case management, and analytics platforms.
- Conduct line-by-line aged inventory reviews on a quarterly basis.
- Develop and own negotiation training and anchor offer strategy.
Risk Management & Compliance
- Ensure litigation handling complies with all state and federal regulatory requirements.
- Support enterprise risk management by identifying emerging legal risks and proposing mitigation strategies.
- Maintain strong controls over documentation, reporting, and litigation workflow.
Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement
- Serve as a key advisor to senior leadership on litigation risk, outcomes, and strategy.
- Partner with Claims leaders to improve litigation avoidance strategies and pre-litigation negotiation practices.
- Participate in claim reviews, mediations, settlement conferences, and executive case oversight committees.
- Communicate complex legal concepts clearly and effectively to non-legal stakeholders.
- Act as a liaison to underwriting for any choice of counsel requests.
Leadership & Talent Development
- Lead, mentor, and develop a team of Litigation Managers, Litigation Specialists, and Claims leaders to enhance litigation processes and firm tactics.
- Create training programs to strengthen litigation competency and file-handling quality.
- Support succession planning and foster a high-performance culture.
Strategic Leadership & Oversight
- Develop and implement the litigation management strategy across all P&C claim segments.
- Provide executive-level oversight of litigated and pre-litigated claims, ensuring sound legal defenses and resolution strategies.
- Establish litigation philosophy, guidelines, and performance standards for internal staff and outside counsel in collaboration with casualty claims leadership.
- Guide cross-functional discussions with Claims, Underwriting, Risk Engineering, and Legal regarding emerging legal trends and risk mitigation.
Litigation Portfolio Management
- Oversee complex, high-severity, high-exposure cases, providing direction on defense tactics, settlement strategy, and risk analyses.
- Conduct regular portfolio reviews to assess case quality, litigation exposure, reserving accuracy, and outcome predictability.
- Monitor trends involving attorney behavior, jurisdictional risks, settlement patterns, and legal precedents.
Requirements
- Juris Doctor degree required.
- Professional designations such as CPCU, AIC, SCLA, ARM are strongly preferred.
- Active law license if required by the organization.
- Minimum of 10 years of experience in P&C claims or litigation, including extensive exposure to handling or supervising litigated matters.
- At least 5 years of leadership experience with responsibility for litigation oversight, outside counsel management, or complex claims.
- Experience managing multi-jurisdictional litigation portfolios and high-severity losses.
- Prior experience in a national or regional P&C insurer is strongly preferred.
Working Conditions
- General office environment.
- Some travel required for counsel reviews, interviews, industry events, court events, mediations, or regional claim office visits.
Compensation & Benefits
- Estimated base salary range: $123,865 - $163,368 annually.
- Actual compensation determined by role scope, individual qualifications, experience, internal equity, and market data.
- Comprehensive total rewards package including:
- Annual incentive compensation
- Medical, dental, vision, and life insurance
- Accident, critical illness, and short-term disability insurance
- Retirement plans with employer contributions
- Generous time-off program
- Programs supporting employee well-being and financial security
- Officer-level employees may be eligible for additional compensation components such as performance-based incentives, long-term incentive plans, and participation in executive benefit programs.
Location