Category Archives: Claims Writing Workshop

5 Key Insights Every Counsel Status Report Must Deliver for Claims Examiners

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Get to the point! Claims examiners are juggling more responsibilities than ever, with less time to do them. Meanwhile, legal counsel, striving to be both transparent and thorough, provide numerous updates throughout a claim’s lifecycle. But how often do these reports actually help claims professionals do their jobs better?

In claims management, success requires strategic case management, not just routine updates. Effective counsel reports should provide clear, concise, and actionable insights—not unnecessary detail or vague summaries.

Why Counsel Reports Need to Evolve

Most counsel reports check the compliance box but fail to aid in managing litigation effectively. Examiners often receive boilerplate updates with recycled case history and little real insight.

What claims examiners actually need:

  1. Clear case trajectory – What has changed, what hasn’t, and how does it impact claim strategy?
  2. Analysis, not summaries – Focus on how new developments affect liability, causation, damages, and valuation.
  3. Actionable recommendations – Instead of listing motions, highlight next steps and required actions.
  4. Efficiency and brevity – Keep reports concise yet substantive, delivering only what is necessary.

When done right, counsel reports become strategic tools—guiding claims professionals toward proactive, informed decision-making.

5 Elements Every Counsel Report Must Cover

To ensure optimal case outcomes, reports should follow a structured, action-driven format. Every status report should answer these five critical questions upfront:

1. What’s This Case About?

Claims examiners manage high caseloads. Give them an immediate snapshot—don’t make them dig through files. Provide:

  • A concise case summary (just a few sentences).
  • Key legal and factual issues impacting liability and damages.
  • The current litigation decision point (settlement, defense, or further investigation).

2. What’s New Since the Last Report?

Stick to substantive updates that show case progress and strategy shifts. Avoid repeating past details. Address:

  • Significant developments since the last update.
  • Discovery, depositions, expert reports, or court rulings that impact the case.
  • Any shifts in case valuation due to new evidence.

3. Has Anything Changed That Impacts Strategy or Value?

This is the heart of the report—claims examiners need your assessment, not just facts. Provide:

  • Liability updates – Has new evidence shifted fault assessment?
  • Causation analysis – Do new medical reports, expert findings, or testimony affect the argument?
  • Damages evaluation – Has the potential payout increased or decreased?

4. What’s Next?

After outlining past developments, give a roadmap for what’s ahead. This fosters collaboration and keeps claims aligned with litigation strategy. Include:

  • Upcoming deadlines, motions, depositions, or mediations.
  • Key decisions required in the next phase.
  • Any budget or strategy adjustments based on recent developments.

5. What Does Claims Need to Do?

Be direct—if you need something, ask for it. Address:

  • Required approvals or actions from claims.
  • Justification for requests (e.g., expert retention, budget modifications, additional investigation).

Transforming Legal Reports into Strategic Tools

A well-structured report benefits everyone:

✔ Claims professionals get clear, actionable insights, reducing follow-ups and delays.
✔ Legal counsel stays aligned with claims strategy, ensuring cost-effective litigation.
✔ Case outcomes improve through data-driven decision-making.

Counsel reports should be more than just updates—they should be decision-making tools. By focusing on new developments, impact analysis, and next steps, legal reporting shifts from passive updates to proactive case management.

How does your organization ensure counsel reports provide the right insights? Let’s discuss in the comments below!

The Claims Writing Workshop: Write How You Speak! Just Leave Out The Color Commentary

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Don’t make your claims writing complicated when you can keep it simple!

I was startled by a claims manager who shook his head sorrowfully and told me, “It’s terrible. All my adjusters write the way they speak!”

I thought, “How strange. Writers should write the way they speak.”

When I asked the manager what he disliked about writing that sounds like human speech, he said, “The writing is too colloquial, too disorganized — like stream of consciousness — and it doesn’t get to the point.”

Well, colloquialism and slang are not called for in claims writing, but natural, simple writing that sounds the way one human being would speak to another is certainly preferable to the legalese and jargon that permeates so many claims letters.

As for lack of organization, it’s true that speech is a more spontaneous medium than writing. No one expects us always to talk in full sentences or get to the point instantly or not digress occasionally in a conversation. Writing does require a plan and should get to the point quickly. This “plan of action,” meshed with the warmth and color of human speech, yields the best writing.

Leave out old-fashioned phrases, clichés, or pompous phrases

Anyone who has ever dictated a letter has had to confront the sounds of old-fashioned phrases, clichés, or pompous phrases that they have written. Suddenly, there may be a moment of awareness that what has been dictated is a far cry from how you would have expressed the same thoughts in a conversation. So “writing the way you speak,” with obvious caveats, is good advice.

If you hear yourself ramping up small words into big ones, ask yourself why you are doing this. Are you trying to sound “businesslike”? Are you showing that you have been educated and know these big words? Are you parroting what an attorney just wrote to you? None of these reasons justifies using noticeably
stodgy or cliché language in a letter.

I think that many managers believe that “writing the way you speak” opens the floodgates to colloquialism, slang, and careless punctuation that may be used in e-mails will be used when writing to insureds, attorneys, and claims commissioners.

But e-mail is a separate entity from a business letter. It occupies a place somewhere between the informality of speech and the relative formality of a business letter. You might not always use a complete salutation (e.g., “Dear Mr. Wheeler” in an e-mail, but you would certainly use one in a letter. You might skip the closing (e.g., “Sincerely,”) in an e-mail, but don’t try it in a business letter.

Don’t Intimidate

The harshest criticism of claims letters is that they are intimidating. This has several unpleasant side effects. First, an intimidated insured might well call an attorney just to decipher the letter. Second, the letter’s tone can be so abrupt, formalistic, or threatening as to cause an insured to fight back harder or at least to slow up the claim handling. Third, if the adjuster writes a convoluted letter that also happens to break with the company’s idea of proper claims handling, a judge or jury will be less forgiving because they will react as much to the letter’s language as to the details of how the claim was handled.

So, write using the model of speech’s simplicity, directness, and warmth. Just don’t  mirror speech’s unplanned distraction and tendency to ramble.