Making mistakes in professional life and learning from professional liability claims

As a professional liability lawyer and professional indemnity insurance broker - my career has been defined by working with professionals and directors who run into error. Mistakes, stuff ups and all the fallout that follows.

No one is safe in professional life. Remember that over a career whether as a lawyer, engineer, building surveyor, architect, financial adviser, insurance broker valuer etc you are bound to see something go wrong causing loss, maybe multiple claims or even get investigated by a regulator.

It sounds miserable doesn’t it - but there are some huge positives here - stay with me!

The value of learning from mistakes

It’s the learnings folks, the learning from mistakes is where it is all at, the how and why things go wrong so we can avoid them in the future is priceless.

If it has happened to you - a professional error, you know what this means. If it hasn’t - the question is - how can you learn from others?

I will let you in on a secret, the best advice is prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

The stress of professional liability claims

Because the one thing that I always see following professional liability claims is extreme personal stress, particularly where little legal risk mitigation is in place. The pressure and risk of losing it all, money, reputation and the uncertainty dragging on for years is the biggest worry.

Whilst litigation can take time, the right lawyers know where to push and pull to resolve and there are also steps that can be taken BEFORE a claim occurs, like:

• ensuring your client agreement is up to date with latest law and has robust considered legal risk protection;
• Your PI policy and asset protection should also be in order BEFORE the claim happens and this is priceless.

Not only to mitigate risk but to take away uncertainty and stress. Because there is really nothing worse than a claim AND a denied insurance claim to boot.

Unfortunately, these mitigation steps are more often approached by professionals AFTER a claim.

The business impact of claims

A second thing I have learned about human nature is that after the claim, the professionals attention is focused on the claim and distracted from day to day business. Almost always a professional’s success takes a hit along with their confidence.

After all, if your attention is focused to a major problem, it’s not where it should be in growing your business. That is the biggest downside.

Making mistakes makes you unstoppable

On the topic of mistakes I was listening to a audiobook by Gary Vaynerchuk recently, the author of Crushing It and on the concept of making mistakes he said this:

I am making mistakes daily, weekly, monthly and yearly and it’s making me unstoppable.

After a career investigating mistakes I just couldn’t stop laughing when Gary said it. How could this be good? But I got it. It’s about learning from mistakes - it all about the learning.

The point being made is we learn from mistakes and this is so true in business. At some stage something will go wrong. Make sure you are ready to handle it.

This article is a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.

Tagged as:

• professional liability