The Lawyers are Coming, the Lawyers are Coming

“Beware of the sharks that swim on the land.”
– Jimmy Buffet

Oh the shark bites with his teeth bared, and he keeps them pearly white.

The New Jersey Star-Ledger reports that insurers have begun to sell liability policies to businesses for lawsuits arising from social media initiatives.  Is this something with which consulting firms and their clients should be concerned?

Witness this passage from the article:

In the meantime, companies need to think about protecting themselves from potentially devastating lawsuits, said Edward Klaris, an expert in media law who teaches at Columbia University.

“Any company that is involved in social media may well want to get traditional errors and omissions insurance, and they would not have had to do so in the past,” said Klaris.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for this to become part of general liability coverage (if it ever does) as well as how long until public relations, marketing, advertising and social media firms seek such coverage on a broad scale.

We’d be interested in hearing how many of you who manage agencies have purchased such coverage or have begun to include specific language in your contracts regarding social media.  Are lawsuits arising from social media campaigns significantly different than from traditional media, marketing or advertising campaigns?  We’re not sure it’s absolutely necessary as most master agreements and liability policies cover issues related to work product, but insurance companies tend more often than not to be ahead of the curve on such matters (especially when it comes to future forecasting), and they rarely make bad bets.

Either way, this is something every organization — be they consultants or not — should begin to study.