"Oblivious" lawyers refuse to let bookkeeper make simple phone call that would save the firm $125k

Author image for Brad Dickson
Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Nov 13, 2023 7:00 AM EST

No one likes insurance companies, and what is there to like about paying for a service on the off chance you might one day need it, only to have that service provider behave with hostility and suspicion when that day arrives, doing everything they can to get out of honoring the service that they were being paid all this time to provide. Sure, not all insurers are like this, but being left in the lurch when you're already in a dire moment really sticks with you, and people's fear of that happening to them continues to propagate the myth and thus the reputation of insurers on the whole. 

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  • Anyways, insurance companies aren't even central to this post… So maybe it's not fair to go after insurance companies here. The real point of this introduction is to bring home the idea that insurance companies are notoriously difficult to deal with, stacked with layers of bureaucracy that are intentionally difficult to navigate. To the point where even their own lawyers find them difficult to deal with.

    This law firm bookkeeper attempted to navigate the beauracracy of the firm's insurance-company clients by making simple direct calls, which would save the firm multiples of $25-50k and save the firm's lawyers precious time. Yet, the oblivious lawyers they were trying to help were unhappy with them apparently overstepping their role, leading the bookkeeper to apathetically step back and watch the money drain down the sink.

  • 01
    "I wish I had $125k to toss away because I didn't want to let someone make a phone call..." MULTI TABLE
    via LinkedIn Sales Solutions
  • 02
    Posted by u/Intelligent_Hand2615 8 hours ago I was taking too many liberties... M OC I'm a bookkeeper working for a law firm, specializing in receivables and trust accounting (keeping track of what money in the trust account belongs to whom, and what we can do with it). We also work for a lot of insurance companies on their
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 03
    specialty lines, for example, if a bank makes an insurance claim because it discovered one of its clients was running a ponzi scheme through their accounts, but insurance refuses to pay out because bank employees were involved, which is excluded by the policy, and the bank sues over this, we would represent the insurance company.
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 04
    Insurance companies have lots of rules for how you bill them, words you can and cannot use, activities you can and cannot bill, etc. and it's part of my job to know these guidelines and make sure our bills are compliant with them. Unfortunately, many of these insurance companies use a third party administrator (TPA) to review
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 05
    their bills, and adjust them if not in compliance with the guidelines, and they're often wrong. This leads to appeals, which have their own requirements, that I also must know. The result of all of this is that in order to get these bills done properly, and collect as much as possible on them, it takes a lot of communication with our vendors, and lawyers, and the claims counsel at the insurer.
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 06
    For most of my time at this firm, I have simply reached out as needed to anyone I need to clear up billing issues, and keep the issues requiring a lawyer's attention to a minimum. Additionally, nearly all of the claims counsel have told me to reach out to them as needed for billing issues. The lawyers' value is in providing advice to our clients, not in billing minutiae that I am perfectly capable of dealing with, and my job is to support them by dealing with the minutiae. Or so I thought...
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 07
    It turns out a bunch of lawyers were unhappy with me reaching out to claims counsel whenever I needed to, and not making the request to the lawyer to reach out to claims counsel for whatever I needed. Okay, fine. It's not like I don't have other work to keep me busy for the rest of time, you want to deal with this , you go ahead.
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 08
    Needless to say, the lawyers were (still are) completely oblivious to the amount of work my job entails (I guess that's my fault for doing a good job all these people years). So far we've missed several appeal deadlines, resulting in about $25,000 in foregone revenue. There's a method for most insurers for appeals after the fact, but it doesn't really work for, "we didn't
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 09
    email you before the deadline, would you please approve it now anyway?" The managing partner asked me if we could do an appeal after the fact, he's spent a week working out how to say, "yeah, it's our fault, but would you please still fix it for us?" There's another $25k in appeals due on Monday which we need claims counsel to approve, so the TPAS will process the appeal, and the lawyer who has to get me
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 10
    the approval is away Thursday and Friday. There's another probably $50k in appeals on other files which are due by the end of the month. I could fix everything with a couple phone calls, but I'm not allowed to make them. Claims counsel won't reach out to me unless they need to (I dropped enough hints that they understand what is happening, and are supporting my malicious compliance), so we're both watching the clock tick down... I wish I had $125k to toss away because I didn't want to let someon
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 11
    throwaway47138 · 7 hr. ago . Make sure all the partners are aware of the ones who complained about you doing your job, as well as how much money is being lost because they then didn't do the job that they were upset at you for doing. At some point the rest of the partners are gonna lose their at their colleagues money down the drain because of their egos... Vote Reply Share
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 12
    mike_the_pirate. 6 hr. ago ^ This unfortunately their stupidity is ultimately your fault for letting them try to make themselves responsible for handling the dumb stuff that you deal with as a part of your duties. In all honesty they'll probably blame you when things go sideways. Vote Reply Share
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 13
    .0. vacuousintent 7 hr. ago I'd love to hear the fallout after a month or two. Someone is gonna want to know why the company is losing out on this money. Can you update us when it happens? Vote Reply Share Intelligent Hand2615 OP. 7 hr. ago Absolutely. I posted now because all of the fallout won't be known for months.
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 14
    Unfortunately, we've had a stellar October, and November promises to be equally stellar, because of the work I did before MC so the partners won't see anything until Q1 2024 but Q1 is always a heavy cash bleed, so between that and the six figure write-offs...should be interesting. Vote Reply Share
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 15
    Compulawyer 6 hr. ago The managing partner at that firm needs to get their head out of their and actually manage their firm. That starts with telling lawyers to let support staff do the jobs they were hired to do. They know their jobs better than the lawyers. Lawyers practice law. Other professionals practice their own professions. Vote Reply Share
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 16
    Intelligent_Hand2615 OP. 6 hr. ago Thank You! Yes! 90% of the time he's great, but sometimes he forgets he's not their colleague, he's their boss. Vote Reply Share
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 17
    litsalmon 7 hr. ago You'd think lawyers would want to spend their time, I don't know, lawyering, and not this type of activity. Good on you, OP. If it were me, I'd try to parlay this event into a raise. Vote Reply Share
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 18
    BrobdingnagLilliput 6 hr. ago I really, really, really hope that you're documenting every lost dollar for use in your next review. Vote Reply Share Intelligent Hand2615 OP. 5 hr. ago Oh yes. I have a spreadsheet that tracks all the reductions, and their reasons, my recommendation to appeal or not appeal, and whether or not the appeal is successful.
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 19
    BrobdingnagLilliput · 6 hr. ago Also, if your knowledge is worth $100K per month, you need to both negotiate a BIG raise and start shopping your knowledge to other firms in the insurance sector. Vote Reply Share Intelligent_Hand2615 OP. 6 hr. ago I wish! Lol... It's complicated, irrelevant, and boring, so I left it out for obvious reasons, but since you asked:
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 20
    It's not consistent, month to month, and usually not that high. Sometimes it's nothing because everything made it through TPA review. In this particular case, an institutional client said they were waiting for a coverage opinion, and would pay us if denied. Fine, they do this a couple times a year. Usually they're approved and usually the insurer pays us.
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 21
    Only this time they took six months to confirm coverage. Then we had to do the assessment and budget, but the lawyers took forever to do that for some unknown reason, and the budget can't be approved without the assessment. Without an approved budget, you can't submit invoices. But we're still working, still invoicing, they just aren't going anywhere. It's also a lot of work. Probably $1,500,000 a year in fees.
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 22
    Then claims counsel went awol, and the lawyers refused to go above her, so our budget still isn't getting approved. Finally, a VP called me to discuss something else entirely, but before he ended the call, said, "is there anything you're waiting for from our people?" and, seeing my opportunity, I ran with it. But the VP said he would only approve 4 invoices a month; he has his
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 23
    own constraints, and approving all the invoices at once would probably trip an internal review for him, so fine. I was getting movement, I didn't care. TL;DR: the appeals may be due over the next couple months, but they represent nearly two years of billings on a very active file.
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 24
    I'm planning a move into insurance next year. I've been cultivating my relationships with claims counsel for quite a while now, and I'm working on my CIP. Vote Reply Share
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 25
    TheEmptyMasonJar 7 hr. ago ● I imagine OP is cheaper than that lawyer, so the firm is effectively losing money and paying extra to do so. To think cashiers get reamed for their registers being off by $10.00... Vote Reply Share
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 26
    Intelligent Hand2615 OP. 5 hr. ago I imagine OP is cheaper than that lawyer, so the firm is effectively losing money and paying extra to do so. I cannot deny the accuracy of your imagining.
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 27
    To think cashiers get reamed for their registers being off by $10.00... This to me is hilarious (in a sad kinda way), because I've made some big fuckups in my time. Like I've done $10k a couple times. $10 is a rounding error. Vote Reply Share
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 28
    insurancelawyerbot · 6 hr. ago As a former 'claims counsel', I apologize on behalf of every carrier that rigorously applies software management to billing situations. I took personal pleasure in overruling the software cuts whenever possible to make my outside counsels lives a little easier. I wanted my lawyers working on the case, not diddling around with coding issues, so thank you for taking the intelligent approach. Vote Reply Share
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 29
    Reikotsu 5 hr. ago Just cover your and make a paper trail notifying the people that needs to be notified that you stopped doing this job, or you can be a scapegoat. Vote Reply Share
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615
  • 30
    fetfreak74 6 hr. ago . As much as I love a good story over a dumb about boss, I really must say I truly admire the pluck of an insurance company. Not only do they screw over their customers every chance that they get, they screw over their lawyers as well. Vote Reply Share
    via u/Intelligent_Hand2615

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