Osborn Talks About Being An Insurance Attorney
The Washburn Business Law Society hosted Jennifer Osborn on Thursday, September 21, 2006. Ms. Osborn spoke about insurance regulation and compliance issues in her presentation, "What Does An Insurance Attorney Do?"
Ms. Osborn began her presentation by explaining that even though insurance is the most hated industry, aside from oil companies, work as an insurance attorney can be enjoyable. She discussed how the industry is one of the most heavily regulated, which necessitates a large number of lawyers to make sure insurance companies are compliant and to push back the regulatory authorities when they overstep their legal boundaries.
Ms. Osborn described in detail the actual work she does representing insurance companies. She talked about the enormous amount of paperwork necessary when one insurance company wants to buy another insurance company and assume all of their policies. In these cases there are contract issues and many regulatory issues concerning government agencies.
Another area that Ms. Osborn is involved with is representing the companies when they are criticized for their certain practices. At times this necessitates fixing compliance issues within the company. At other times this takes substantial research into the specific regulation to prove that the agency has overstepped the law, and the company is not obligated to change its practice.
The litigation portion of Ms. Osborn’s job involves representing the insurance companies when there are alleged bad faith claims. This occurs when people argue the company has not processed their claims correctly. She also has had to deal with cases when the companies have rescinded policies because the ailment that the claim concerns was not written on the initial policy forms.
Ms. Osborn graduated from Washburn Law magna cum laude, in 1996 and is an attorney at Polsinelli Shalton Welte Suelthaus PC in Overland Park, Kansas.
