Erica Tina Helfer’s practice is focused on a variety of areas related to the general matters of corporate insurance. Her area of focus includes representation of the Firm’s corporate clients on insurance coverage issues such as determining the existence and extent of insurance coverage for various matters, representation of these clients in negotiation of insurance coverage documents and in pre-litigation disputes, and providing advise and counsel to litigation and other corporate attorneys within the Firm with respect to insurance coverage issues.
Ms. Helfer also concentrates her practice in the area of alternative insurance markets and coverage mechanisms with the Firm’s nontraditional risk-spreading entities, including risk purchasing groups, risk retention groups and self-insurance programs. In this area, Ms. Helfer’s practice includes drafting program documents and coverage agreements and advising and counseling these entities on implementing the programs as well as on coverage issues. Ms. Helfer also works with other corporate insurance attorneys at Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP in their general representation of insurance companies, agents and brokers, and other insurance entities providing legal and counseling services on corporate, commercial, coverage and regulatory matters.
Prior to joining the Firm, Ms. Helfer served as in-house corporate counsel for two Chicago-based companies handling general corporate matters, litigation matters, and a wide variety of other legal matters. Ms. Helfer also has extensive commercial and environmental litigation experience from her previous seven years in the private practice of law. Immediately following law school, Ms. Helfer was a Law Clerk for U.S. Senior District Judge William H. Becker in Kansas City, Missouri.
Ms. Helfer received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Urban Studies from Washington University in 1976. In 1980, she received her Juris Doctor degree, cum laude, from St. Louis University School of Law. From 1979 to 1980, she was a staff member of the St. Louis University Law Journal which published an article that she authored. Ms. Helfer is admitted to practice in Illinois and before the United States Trial Bar.