How early and effectively a carrier responds to a claim can have a major impact on how that claim ultimately resolves. This reality is at the heart of CLM’s Incident Response Task Force, which aims to provide tools and best practices for building and operating effective rapid response teams, ensuring that initial response and those first 24 hours do not hamstring insurers and defense counsel down the road.
As Incident Response Task Force Steering Committee Co-Chair Michael Hallock, McCoy Leavitt Laskey LLC, notes, “In litigation and risk management, the window between a catastrophic incident and a company’s first organized response is often the most consequential. Decisions made—or not made—within the first 24 hours can reverberate throughout the life of a claim or lawsuit, shaping outcomes and determining whether a company faces defensible litigation or costly exposure.” Hallock adds, “Rapid, integrated legal response—driven by experienced attorneys and experts—has evolved from a niche strategy into a necessity. The companies that fail to adopt this approach find themselves increasingly vulnerable in today’s aggressive litigation climate.”
Hallock says core elements of a successful Rapid Response framework typically include immediate on-scene legal presence, an integrated expert team, strategic case development, and a data-driven defense. But, Hallock points out, “While the benefits of this approach are clear, the execution remains inconsistent across the industry. Every insurer, law firm, and corporate legal department faces different challenges in building and deploying Rapid Response capabilities.
It is with this in mind that CLM’s Incident Response Task Force steps in, opening communication lines and developing best practices across five subcommittees dedicated to different areas of the claims landscape. Steering Committee Co-Chair Diana M. Dearmin, corporate counsel, Liberty Mutual Insurance, provides insights on what the Task Force has been up to since its first meeting in August 2025, and what’s in store for 2026.
Q: Can you tell me a bit about how the Incident Response Task Force came to be and what the Task Force hopes to accomplish?
Dearmin: This idea grew out of conversations that we had at the 2025 CLM Annual Conference Chapter Leaders meeting where we compared how carriers and defense counsel handle “incident response” matters across different lines of business. We saw an opportunity to reduce inconsistency in early response, align expectations, and share practical, field-tested approaches across specialties. The task force’s goal is to build a cross-discipline community and develop a set of practical resources that help carriers and counsel alike respond faster and more effectively when an incident occurs. Initially, each subcommittee is developing practice pointers and tips, such as intake questions, early issue-spotting, expert retention, coordination, and reporting expectations that can be updated as the legal landscape evolves. We also see this as a pipeline for CLM education through webinars, conference programming, and articles.
Q: What are some interesting results so far as initial subcommittee meetings have kicked off?
Dearmin: Since spring 2025, with CLM’s strong support, we’ve launched five subcommittees: Construction, Workers’ Compensation, Property, Transportation, and Cybersecurity, each in various stages of drafting their initial practice-pointer deliverables.
Early wins have been:
- Strong national engagement across carriers and firms.
- Identification of shared themes that cut across practice areas.
- The creation of a sustainable community model with recurring meetings.
Q: What do you expect from the task force over the course of 2026?
Dearmin: In 2026, the primary objective is to finalize and publish the initial set of practice pointers/tips and targeting completion by June 2026. The sub-committee leaders are expanding their work into broader CLM education, e.g., conference sessions, webinars, and articles, so the guidance is accessible and actionable for the CLM community. Longer term, we want each subcommittee to function as an ongoing resource and peer network for incident response issues as legal, technology, and claim trends evolve.