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Practice area 03Risk & coverage advisory.
The cheapest hour in any claim is the one spent before it exists. Coverage positions, staffing structures, and exposure — reviewed while they can still be changed.
Overview
Most expensive claims are not accidents of bad luck. They are the predictable result of a decision made months earlier — how a workforce was classified, what an agreement said about indemnity, whether a coverage position was defensible when it was taken.
Carriers, professional employer organizations, and growing companies bring Robert in to look at those decisions before they harden into litigation. He has consulted for carriers, PEOs, and startups on liability and workers' compensation matters, and he has lectured at workers' compensation seminars on this side of the practice.
Common client concerns
- Whether a coverage position will hold up if it is challenged
- Employer, employee, and statutory employer classification questions
- PEO and staffing arrangements, and where responsibility actually lands
- Independent contractor classification and the exposure it creates
- Indemnity and hold-harmless language in service agreements
- Exemption filings, certificates, and gaps between what was intended and what was obtained
- Fast-growing companies whose insurance program has not kept pace with the workforce
- Claim handling practices that create avoidable litigation
How Laur Law approaches this work
A defense lawyer's read, not a checklist
The relevant question is not whether a structure is arguable. It is how it will look when a claimant's attorney reads it aloud, and whether it can be defended when someone is motivated to attack it.
Plain answers
Advice arrives in language a business owner or claims executive can act on directly, with the risk stated clearly rather than hedged into uselessness. Where the answer is genuinely uncertain, that gets said too.
Scoped to the question
Engagements are sized to what you actually need — a single conversation, a written opinion on one structure, or an ongoing relationship for the questions that come up as you grow.
What to expect
- An initial conversation — no charge, to determine whether there is a real question and whether Laur Law is the right place for it
- A defined scope — what will be reviewed, what you will receive, and what it will cost, agreed before work starts
- A written answer — the position, the risk, and the practical recommendation
- A standing line — for clients who want questions answered as they arise rather than in scheduled reviews
Questions we get
We are not in litigation. Is this premature?
It is the opposite. Once a claim is filed, the structure is what it is and the work shifts to defending it. Advisory work is the only stage at which the underlying arrangement can still be improved.
Do you work with PEOs specifically?
Yes. PEO and staffing arrangements raise recurring questions about who the employer is for coverage purposes, and those questions are considerably cheaper to answer in advance.
Can you review our current claim handling?
Yes. Patterns in how claims are handled early often explain which files end up litigated, and those patterns are usually fixable.
How is advisory work billed?
By agreed scope, hourly, or on a flat fee for defined projects. The arrangement is set before any work begins.
Better to ask now than to argue it later.
Bring the question while it is still a question.