Articles
This is the first in a series of five articles about top rainmakers.
Peter H. Klee is the biggest rainmaker at Luce Forward in San Diego, bringing in between $10-$15 million each year, and his insurance litigation practice continues to grow at a rate of 10 percent per year. What sets him apart as 2008 Rainmaker of the Year, in the category of partners who are litigators, is his unbeatable record: no client represented in court by Peter has ever been found liable for breach of insurance contract, bad faith or any other tort.
“Your work product is your best source of referrals,” Klee said. “Most of my referrals come from people in the insurance industry referring other people in the industry. And they refer other people to us.”
His formidable record includes:
• He and his group have handled more than 1,500 cases over the last 20 years. They treat every single case as a life or death cause that cannot be lost under any circumstances.
• Klee has obtained defense verdicts in more than 500 cases, including more than 50 cases in the last year alone.
• He has eliminated 80% of lawsuits filed against his largest client, a major property and casualty insurance company that had been sued in the past nearly 200 times per year. “We took an insurance company that had been sued repeatedly in southern California. But now, no one has successfully sued them for 20 years, nobody’s ever gotten a dime. The plaintiff’s bar made a decision that it just wasn’t worth it,” he said.
• One-third of his current clients have been the results of client referrals.
• He has expanded each client account he has worked on significantly from the original scope of work. His client list includes most of the major insurance carriers, including the Allstate Insurance, State Farm, St. Paul-Travelers Ins. Co., and the Automobile Club of Southern California. His reputation for no losses is especially attractive to large insurance providers.
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Luce Forward is a full service law firm with more than 200 attorneys practicing in San Diego, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Carmel Valley/Del Mar, Orange County and Rancho Santa Fe. In 1987, Klee founded the firm’s Insurance Litigation Department, which he built by cherry picking lawyers who were in the top 10% of their law school classes, but who were doing low-level work for mega firms like Cravath, Gibson Dunn, Shearman & Sterling, Latham & Watkins and Irell & Manella.
“I tell the associates if they come with me, they’ll be in trial within one to two years and they’ll be running their own cases,” he said. When he hires an associate he encourages them to develop business on their own, but he provides them with all the work they’ll need. “I don’t want the person who is in the legal profession because they can make a lot of money; I want somebody who is passionate about what they do.
“We believe in our clients and that shows through. Clients recognize they’re going to get the best from us; it’s not just commodity legal work. We care about the results and it means a lot to us. We would probably work for free just because we like it so much. For us, it’s really not about the money. It’s the joy of competition and fighting for somebody we like and believe in. We’ve had cases where we had to pull rabbits out of a hat and dug into our personal reservoirs as only a person who is deeply devoted to victory can.”
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