Every design professional likes to get paid promptly. While it’s not the only reason you are in business, getting paid certainly beats the alternatives. But did you ever think that ensuring prompt payment from your clients can help reduce errors and omissions claims and enhance your insurance loss ratio? Our experience in litigating engineer and architect claims has been that design professionals who are meticulous about getting timely paid are less likely to endure the indignities, time waste, and expense of litigation, with its endless meetings, document production, depositions and, God forbid, trials.

In our view,litigation against non-paying customers should be a last resort, rarely invoked and only in the most extreme circumstances. This is because a recalcitrant, non-paying customer, is quite likely to counterclaim for negligence or malpractice. Rather, the measures set forth in this article, including tight contracts, prompt and thorough change orders, and alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, can try to keep design professionals out of court and at their jobsites where they belong.