Writing in NLJ this week, journalist and barrister Veronica Cowan explores the opportunities for lawyers to take on this investigative role.
The reason for the new breed of lawyer-detectives is the ever-developing ingenuity of fraudsters and the increasing number of insurance claims dealt with online. Its easier to file false images and invented facts online than on paper, so scams are proliferating.
Cowan writes: ‘Some claims are straightforward, while others are complex and then there are the potentially fraudulent claims. Such claims are also handled by loss adjusters, but increasingly many are being investigated by law firms. As to which ones are referred to a law firm, it depends very much on the counter fraud set-up of individual insurers, but many employ the services of counter-fraud teams within insurance law firms.’
