What is the estimated total annual spending by the U.S. insurance
industry on outside legal counsel? Note whether your number includes
or excludes expert witnesses and other non-lawyer fees. To drill down,
I am especially interested in P&C insurance (not life/health) spending
on outside litigators. If you can triangulate an estimate using
multiple sources or assumptions, even better. Your methodology needs
to be sound and explicit, as I will be citing your figures and sources
in a presentation to a client.

<In 2001, the P&C insurance industry spent $30 billion on outside
legal fees (source A.M.Best Company). This figure includes litigation
expenses.

A.M. Best is an Insurance Information Source. It is the world’s oldest
and most authoritative source of insurance company ratings and
information. They provide industry reports, news and ratings. Access
to their database is by subscription which costs from $199 for 3
months.

The links below to ‘cracking a hard market’ (perform a search for
‘outside’ to locate the information in this document) and
‘Dynasearch.net’ quote the $30 billion figure for P&C insurance legal
fees.

<Additional links:>

<Cracking a hard market>
<http://www.csc-fs.com/downloads/Feature-Cracking.pdf>

<Dynasearch.net>
<http://www.dynasearch.net/newsletter_03_01_02.html>

<A.M. Best Company>
<http://www.ambest.com/>

For every dollar collected in premiums 10 cents goes towards legal
fees.
http://www.visibillity.com/vis-a-vis/issues/2001/december/article1.html


In 2000 legal fees across all areas of business accounted for $241.4
billion approximately 81% of insurance companies operating costs.
http://www.visibillity.com/vis-a-vis/issues/2002/nov/article3.html


<Search strategy:>

<insurance industry  "legal fees" -uk "p&C" billion>
<://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&as_qdr=all&q=insurance+industry++%22legal+fees%22+-uk+%22p%26C%22&as_q=billion>


<Hope this helps.>

A.M. Best reference was credible and specific, and I did cite it in my
final report. Would have preferred a second data point but this served
the purpose quite adequately.