Bryce Adams Email & Phone Number

Portland, Or, Us

Portland, Oregon, United States

As a shareholder in Bullivant Houser's nationally recognized insurance coverage group, I defend carriers across the gamut of first-party and third-party insurance disputes, with a primary focus on Oregon's evolving common law bad faith doctrine (aka "Moody") with a secondary focus in the large loss events that the West Coast increasingly sees for issues like ice storms, flooding, and most significantly, wildfires. In doing so, I enjoy maintaining a total client relationship, from pre-litigation coverage opinions through pleadings, discovery, dispositive motions, settlement negotiations, and ultimately trial. As I tell associates, the job of representing insurance companies is not to hit a big red "DENIED!" button: far from it. As an insurance attorney, my job is to provide high-value clients with informed analysis that enables them to make good business decisions, whether that equates to settling a claim or taking it all the way to trial. If done properly, this should be a win-win scenario for everyone involved: the carrier is empowered to pursue its legal obligations to the insured, while the insured is entitled to enjoy those benefits to the extent they are actually afforded by the policy at issue.

Portland, Oregon Area

As part of Bullivant's industry-leading insurance defense team, I provide analysis of insurance coverage issues to national (and international) clients on high-value claims issues across a wide gamut of insurance controversies, including, but not limited to, challenging issues of causality in property damage, "longtail" environmental pollution liability, and managers' exposure to personal liability for breach of fiduciary duties. I approach this litigation with a dual focus: first, every step of the actual litigation process is fought hard, from aggressive affirmative defenses in an answer through tough questions during depositions, culminating in robust summary judgment arguments and trial strategies. But I also keep one eye on the client's bottom line: corporate clients would love a win, but they also need to see ROI on prolonged litigation, and my job is not to conduct endless legal battles: it is to solve my clients' problems. And if that means positioning the client for a strong settlement position instead of taking things to a courtroom, I give clear, honest advice that the client can review internally to make sound strategic decision on when it is time to sit down for the negotiating table.Since 2022, my practice increasingly focuses on defending against Oregon's so-called "Moody Doctrine," which (debatably) has created first-party bad faith as a cause of action against property insurers.As part of the next generation of insurance lawyers, I also keep my eye open for emerging trends within the industry: I believe that insurance is more than just a financial driver of the legal ecosystem, but is also a powerful tool for shaping public policy debates on issues like cybersecurity and climate change mitigation. As these highly technical issues come more and more into the legal mainstream, the practitioners who understand their nuances will have a qualitative advantage over opponents stuck in the last century.

Portland, Oregon Area

As an associate attorney in founding partner Michael Farnell's insurance recovery group, I served in Portland's premier policyholder advocacy practice, where I immersed myself in both poles of the policyholder world: the small, one-off claims issues that can make or break an individual or small business, along with the complex litigation that can find a major corporation or public entity going up against multiple insurers with tens of millions of dollars on the line. As a practitioner, I derived the most satisfaction from motion practice in complex legislation, while also honing my specialty in legislative research: to an ex-academic like myself, there is nothing quite like drilling down into the core principles and murky history that has shaped insurance law into its modern form, then distilling these secrets into winning formulas for cutting edge modern cases.

Portland, Oregon Area

Working in management for a software company specializing in public sector deployments of regulatory technology, I oversaw the firm's success on a transactional level, while also forecasting future challenges and providing the type of long-term strategic advice that helps an organization achieve its highest-level goals. Day to day, my transactional work ran the standard gamut of public/private sector contractual arrangement, but given the disparate nature of the organizations with which we partnered, the true sweet spot for me came in the realm of stakeholder management, where I could use my legal training to bring partners (and sometimes rivals) into collaborative relationships through frank contract negotiations that are surprisingly uncommon in the tech world, where very few entrepreneurs ever think to have a lawyer in the room.Since streams of business in a software firm often intersect and synergize, I also wore the hat as program manager specializing in public sector deployments of regulatory compliance technology. I developed an end-to-end understanding of how project management works, from the stakeholder wrangling and requirements solicitation that occurs during Initiating, through removing impediments and guiding developers during the Execution phase of a project life cycle, all the way to managing billing and partner collaboration during while Monitoring products to completion using PMI-derived best practices.

Portland, Oregon Area

As an attorney and certified software developer, I initially supported TruePenny as a combination of in-house general counsel and project manager for active software deployments. As general counsel, I steered the company through renegotiating its service contracts and distribution agreements, in addition to advising corporate officers on internal profit sharing and distribution of control. As project manager, I oversaw the creation of cloud-based public sector regulatory analysis software on tight budgets involving lean teams distributed across the U.S., while also marshaling resources in the U.K. to provide advanced technical support. My background in regulatory analysis and dealing with municipal government clients enabled me to grow into the organization's lead coordinator for RFP and RFI responses, where I liaised with partners and government representatives to produce award-winning service bids worth millions of dollars through detailed contract negotiations and impactful written work.

Vancouver, Washington

I was honored to work with the City Attorney's office of Vancouver, WA for almost 18 months, first as a law student wrapping up his studies, then as a contract attorney with expanded duties that supported the City's senior litigators in civil matters, particularly personal injury claims against the City. My personal injury work culminated in a case-winning Motion for Summary Judgment that ended a million-dollar lawsuit against the City over issues that the court agreed were frivolous.I also worked on the nitty gritty of municipal administration, where City Attorneys deal with the unglamorous but essential functions of administering public land, enforcing municipal codes, and supporting police officer best practices. In each of these illustrative (as opposed to all-inclusive) areas, I took the opportunity to sharpen my research skills and ability to communicate detailed information in a cogent, lucid fashion to decision makers and other non-legal professionals. These small issues, the stuff of everyday public sector lawyering, taught me to appreciate how it's always the little things that can cause the biggest problems, and therefore that attention to detail is the essential prerequisite for my profession. Otherwise, it's headaches and wasted money all the way down.

Clinical Intern

Doctor Of Law (J.D.), Energy, Environment, And Natural Resources Law

Activities and Societies: Dean's Scholarship, 2010-2013

Master Of Arts (M.A.), Modern Middle Eastern And North African Studies

Activities and Societies: Critical Language Scholarship, State Department 2007 [Farsi] Foreign Language & Area Studies Fellowship.

Bachelor Of Arts - Ba, Politial Science; Religious Studies, 3.79

Activities and Societies: Highest Honors for Undergraduate Thesis