BSA develops successful defense strategy: Train your attorneys

The Boy Scouts of Americawent from a poor win record to almost a perfect record by organizing and training their attorneys. Business Insurance

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reported in an article Risk Manager of the Year, published April 24, 2006 that the BSA’s risk manager had organized their defense counsel to make these dramatic changes. In doing so the Risk Manager, Debra Griffith, became the Manager of the Year for her success.

The first approach was to create a unified defense strategy. One law firm was hired to coordinate all lawsuits. This took the claims out of the hand of the insurance company who hired good counsel but never provided additional support for the defense attorneys. Information and successfully strategies where then routed to all attorneys handling cases providing solid ideas and information.

A second approach was to make sure all interrogatories where reviewed by the BSA defense team. This made sure that all interrogatories were answered correctly and the same way.

If you did not know, the plaintiff’s bar has been filing documents for years so answers to interrogatories form another case can be searched to find inconsistencies.

The third idea, and to a large extent the most controversial was a unified training program of all defense counsel…..at a Boy Scout Camp. This allows the defense counsel to get a real feel for the BSA and how the program works. These training programs encourage information and idea sharing both at the conference and when the attorneys go back to home.

It is this last idea that I find so exciting and valuable. From studying motions and briefs and talking to other attorneys in cases the only difference between winning and losing is not the facts of the case but how well the attorneys representing the defendant understand what the defendant was trying to accomplish and how. It is one thing to understand the problems when someone is injured on a ropes course. It is another when the defense team understands the physics of the activity as well as the goals of the participants in the activity.

Another way of looking at this is horseback or equine suits. Falling off a horse produces the same type of defenses: release, equine law and assumption of the risk. However the risks can be explained in a much better way when the plaintiff was part of a weeklong camp program versus someone who rented a horse for a day. The education and care that a camp provides is much different and creates a very different atmosphere from a trail ride offered out the back door of a conference center. Knowing why people are riding the horse can be important in defending a case as knowing the legal issues.

Reading between the lines is to not leave this solely to your insurance company. They will not hire the best law firm, they will not assist in training or getting the firm up to speed, they rarely understand your program and they won’t support you if the dollars look better to sette.

My own experience supports this idea. In the outdoor recreation industry we win cases when the defense firm understands what they are defending rather than throwing the case in their pot and following the same old strategy. Outdoor recreation is different from an auto accident, a fuel spill and a breach of contract. The participants and the outfitters/facilitators/guides are working together to accomplish goals. These facts combined with an attorney who understands the goals of the program, the program and the defenses create a win.