Mary E. Mccutcheon

Mary McCutcheon represents corporate and individual policyholders in a wide variety of insurance coverage disputes. She also chairs the firm's Financial Services Industry Group.

Her wide-ranging experience includes disputes arising out of a variety of scenarios, including securities actions, venture capital and private equity litigation, intellectual property and technology errors and omissions disputes, highly sensitive employment claims, mass casualty personal injury actions, professional liability and construction and delay claims.

Mary has special expertise advising companies and individual directors regarding issues involved in the placement of directors' and officers' liability, management liability and other insurance products available in the financial services liability, and related indemnification issues, as well as handling claims under those policies.

Her day-to-day practice typically involves using a hybrid of legal expertise and interpersonal and negotiating skills to craft workable solutions. This often requires simultaneously working with her clients, the insurance broker, the client’s defense counsel and other parties to the litigation to achieve the client’s goals. By emphasizing a collaborative and strategic approach, a dispute can be understood as a problem to be solved rather than an adversarial situation, with correspondingly better results. Although litigation, as a last resort, is always a viable option, Mary strives instead to convince her opposing counsel that a practical, agreed-upon solution is a better outcome for everyone concerned.

Mary is a past member of the editorial boards of the ABTL Newsletter and the CGL Reporter and former editor of the “Directors & Officers Liability Insurance” chapter in the California Practice Guide Insurance Litigation. She speaks on insurance topics at professional conferences, such as those sponsored by the American Bar Association, the American College of Coverage Counsel; the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Association of Corporation Counsel.