Reading List: Level the Playing Field, Good Hands to Boxing Gloves, and the Fight to Open Insurer Files
Two books every policyholder should know about — and the trial attorneys who have forced insurance companies to disclose internal claims-handling documents to the public.
If you want to understand how the property insurance industry actually operates, two books belong on the shelf. Level the Playing Field by policyholder attorney William F. 'Chip' Merlin Jr. lays out, in plain language, the practical asymmetries built into the modern claim — who has the file, who has the experts, who writes the estimate first — and the tools policyholders and their advocates can use to close the gap.
From Good Hands to Boxing Gloves by David J. Berardinelli (with Aaron DeShaw and Joseph W. Whatley) tells the story of Allstate's 'McKinsey documents' — internal PowerPoints and claims playbooks that were pried loose in discovery and revealed a corporate program to systematically lower payouts on first-party claims. The book is required reading for anyone who still believes 'you're in good hands' is a business philosophy rather than a marketing slogan.
The reason those documents are public at all is the trial bar. Cases like Hensley v. Allstate in New Mexico and the parallel Farmers/State Farm/USAA discovery fights across Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri produced protective-order battles that eventually forced insurers to turn over training manuals, claims handling guidelines, and internal ACD Colossus estimating rules. Attorneys who have led those fights include Chip Merlin, David Berardinelli, Shannon Kmatz, Ray Bourhis (author of Insult to Injury), and — on the trucking and third-party side — the discovery work of Michael Cowen and others.
Public adjusters do not litigate, but we work every day with the artifacts these fights produced: claims software algorithms, internal reserve practices, and 'best practices' training that never fully match what the policy actually says. Knowing the material exists — and where it came from — changes how you read your own claim file.
Recommended reading: Chip Merlin, Level the Playing Field (2017); David Berardinelli, From Good Hands to Boxing Gloves (Trial Guides, 2008); Ray Bourhis, Insult to Injury (2005).