How Insurance Agencies and Brokerages Can Benefit From the Upside of Social Networking While Minimizing the Downside of a Possible E&O Risk

Colleen M. Murphy is Special Counsel with the firm Goldberg Segalla LLP, which has 10 offices throughout New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. Ms. Murphy chairs the firmaEUR(TM)s Insurance Agents and Brokers Errors and Omissions practice sub-group within the firmaEUR(TM)s Professional Liability Practice Group. Since 1992, she has nearly exclusively confined her practice to the defense of insurance agencies and brokerages in errors and omissions claims and lawsuits as well as in consumer complaints and hearings before the New York State Insurance Department. Ms. Murphy has successfully defended hundreds of errors and omissions claims on behalf of insurance agents and brokers across New York State as well as in Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico. Over the years she has delivered numerous errors and omissions loss control CE seminars to insurance agents and brokers across New York State and in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Connecticut. As a partner in the former E&O law firm of Lustig & Brown, LLP, she authored Errors and Omissions loss control reports as well as contributed chapters to an errors and omissions loss control primer. Ms. Murphy has worked with major insurance agents and brokers associations to help meet the diverse needs of their members including helping draft written loss control procedures and forms. She also handles complex product liability and life science matters.

Richard J. Cohen is the Managing Partner of Goldberg Segalla LLP. He is the Co-Chair of the firmaEUR(TM)s Global Insurance Services practice group, Chair of its Professional Liability practice group, and a member of its sports and entertainment practice. Mr. Cohen graduated from the State University of New York at BuffaloaEUR(TM)s School of Management with distinction and its School of Law cum laude. A trial lawyer with more than twenty years of experience, Mr. Cohen maintains a national practice, primarily involving sophisticated insurance coverage and bad faith matters, reinsurance, and E&O and D&O litigation. He has argued in front of New YorkaEUR(TM)s highest court, as well as the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

Mr. Cohen is well published, and has lectured across the country and in Canada on a wide range of topics involving insurance coverage, bad faith, reinsurance, E&O, and D&O issues. Among other things, he has several times authored the annual Survey of New York Insurance Law published in the Syracuse University Law Review. He has also written for both MealeyaEUR(TM)s and ApplemanaEUR(TM)s.

Mr. Cohen is the former National Co-Chair of the Insurance Company Relations Subcommittee of the 22,000 member Defense Research Institute (DRI), and currently serves as Subcommittee Chair of both the Insurance Law and Construction Law Committees of DRI. He has been a CPCU instructor and lecturer for more than a decade. Mr. Cohen is admitted to practice in all the State and federal courts in New York and Pennsylvania, including the United States Courts of Appeal for the Second and Third Circuits. He has on multiple occasions been named to Business FirstaEUR(TM)s WhoaEUR(TM)s Who in Law and to New York Super Lawyers.

Christopher J. Belter is a senior trial partner with Goldberg Segalla LLP and is the chair of the firmaEUR(TM)s commercial and business litigation practice group. He concentrates his practice on complex business and contract disputes, business torts and unfair competition claims, intellectual property litigation and construction law. He is the National Chair of the Defense Research Institute's (DRI) Construction Law Committee and is on the National Steering Committee of DRIaEUR(TM)s Commercial Law Committee. He is also a member of the American Intellectual Property Law Association and the ABA's Business Law and Intellectual Property Committees. He has been named to Business First's Who's Who in Law and to New York Super Lawyers.

Colleen and Rick have known each other since they were 12 years old, when aEURoesocial networkingaEUR? consisted of hanging out at the mall or calling someone on the phone aEUR" two things that, even for 12 year olds, have become passA(C), giving way to Facebook, instant messaging, and shopping onAca,!aEUR~line.

______________________________

As an Insurance agent and broker E&O attorney since 1992, one exciting challenge has been to keep up with the changing ways insurance agents and brokers do business. There have been numerous changes over the years, many driven by new technologies. Do you remember aEURoeT- filingaEUR? or when voice mail and faxing were considered aEURoehigh tech?aEUR? The reason for keeping up with these many changes is to enable us to better predict new or increased E&O exposures associated with new business methods and then determine how to minimize them. The trick has always been to separate a true E&O risk generated by new technologies from those which turn out to be just speculative. Recall the aEURoechicken little/the sky is fallingaEUR? mentality surrounding Y2K?