Profile of Legal Malpractice Claims 2020-2023

Noah Fiedler helps his clients—from lawyers and law firms to corporations and public entities—navigate through the roadblocks and difficulties they face. Noah's clients value his pragmatic approach to both litigation and counseling. By assessing potential impacts on the organization as a whole, he provides his clients with the best solution to their situation, going beyond the context of litigation. He has extensive experience defending lawyers in malpractice claims and in disciplinary proceedings, as well as counseling individual lawyers, law firms and legal departments on risk management and ethics issues. In addition, Noah provides risk management counsel for corporations and public entities and resolves commercial disputes through negation, mediation or, if necessary, litigation. Eileen Garczynski is a senior vice president and equity partner of Ames & Gough. She leads the law firm initiative, focusing on the risk management and insurance needs of law firms. She is also a past appointed member and now liaison to  the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Standing Committee on Lawyers’ Professional Liability and the former vice chair of the Insurance & Risk Management Committee for the Section of Intellectual Property Law of the ABA. Eileen has more than 35 years of risk management and insurance experience. She served as a claims manager and inside counsel for both Travelers Insurance Co. and Wausau Insurance Co. She also was a litigation and risk manager for the American Red Cross and spent seven years with LexisNexis as a strategic market planning manager, developing key insurance and legal products for Fortune 500 companies, law firms and insurers. Ms. Garczynski received her law degree from the University of Baltimore School of Law, a market strategy certificate from Georgetown University and her undergraduate degree, cum laude,  from the College of Wooster. Eileen is the content editor for the following ABA Publications:  Protecting Against Cyber Threats:  A Lawyer’s Guide to Choosing a Cyber-Liability Insurance Policy (Edition 1 and 2); Protecting Law Firms Against Management Liability Threats; and  A Guide to Dissecting the LPL Policy: Tips & Tricks to Placing The Right Coverage for Your Firm. For nearly 25 years, Jessica has focused her practice on representing lawyers and law firms in legal malpractice actions and fee and partnership disputes, providing ethics counseling and representation before the State Bar, and advocating on behalf of other professionals. The State Bar of California certified her as a Specialist in Legal Malpractice Law and appointed her to serve on the State Bar Legal Malpractice Advisory Commission, which drafts the state-wide legal specialization exam.  Jessica chaired the Legal Malpractice Section of the Bar Association of San Francisco for seven years, and was responsible for developing attorney education on risk management and legal malpractice issues.  Her commitment to educating attorneys on these subjects is not limited to California.  Jessica has developed and presented programs for the American Bar Association’s Lawyer’s Professional Liability Section, co-authored its 2016 quadrennial study of legal malpractice claims and has served on its Ed Mendrzycki Essay Contest subcommittee for many years.