Brian Goodman is the very able General Counsel for the National Association of Public Insurance Adjusters. He also worked tirelessly to get public adjusting licensed in Alabama. He has properly corrected me that public adjusting is not “illegal” in Alabama. Mark the time, I am making a correction to this morning’s blog.

Like many of you, Brian Goodman reads our blog every day. He had this to say:

Chip…—I get your blog every day and it is great…Today’s blog re Alabama is in my opinion inaccurate. We spent a great deal of time educating the Alabama DOI re public adjusters in our efforts to get licensing a number of years ago. And, while our licensing efforts were not successful, we made very positive contacts at the Alabama DOI. Bottom line—the Alabama Dept will let p/as work there, ethically…even though they do not license. Our contacts there are Commr Ridling and Reyn Norman and you can contact Reyn to verify this. I just hate seeing a post out there saying it is illegal…I mean no disrespect at all in this e mail and thought I should send this to you. Thanks—Brian

I asked Brian about whether the Bar would prosecute public adjusters for giving advice about claims and here is what he said:

The Alabama bar was a huge problem and was the major impediment to getting a lic bill done. But if they come after any p/a we have cover from the DOI, which has made it very clear that they will not prevent the proper practice of public adjusting in that state. It is probably always best to work through an atty still in Alabama….

To prevent the unauthorized practice of law, I have heard that public adjusters will work with licensed Alabama lawyers to the lawyers do the law and the public adjusters do the estimating and work under the lawyer’s supervision in their activities. I’ve also attached a letter from an Alabama official which Brian sent to me as part of this exchange of information.

I will briefly speak about this issue this afternoon in our Friday Forum at 2. I will also have the lovely and knowledgeable April Hall as a guest speaking about overhead and profit as well as her upcoming seminar, which I will be speaking at on October 23. Here is the link for that event.