The High Cost of Avoiding Higher Costs

I have a very long ‘to do’ list for setting up the new solo practice.  There is a ton of stuff that my old firm used to handle for me.  I never paid any mind to any of it.  And now I have to arrange for lots of stuff, including professional liability insurance.

Where to start?  I was going to go through the Texas bar program for insurance, but I read that they won’t write insurance if your securities practice is too large.  My may become too large, but its difficult to know since I won’t have any clients when I start.  I got a recommendation for a broker from a friend who had a solo practice a few years ago.

I await the estimates for the policy early next week, but the securities coverage is expensive.  The securities rider to the application was lengthy and was not particularly well suited to a new practice that is disconnected to the old practice.  For example, as a solo practitioner, it is unlikely that I’ll be representing underwriters in initial public offerings, but that had been a major part of my practice over the last few years.  And yet, the rider was focused on extrapolating the last year or so of my practice over the next year for coverage.  We’ll see how it turns out.