Montgomery honored as top insurance lawyer

Law Talk profile for The Memphis Daily News

Sept. 5, 2013

Larry Montgomery, associate with Glankler Brown PLLC, has been named a Top Lawyer in American Lawyer/Corporate Counsel’s 2013 Top Rated Lawyers in Insurance Law, based on his Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent rating.

Montgomery’s area of practice focuses on insurance coverage and insurance broker defense work, as well as the defense of banks, both open and closed. The business of defending the directors and officers of closed banks has seen a boost in the past five years with the FDIC having closed 300 to 400 banks, Montgomery said. It’s a work situation similar to that of the Savings & Loan failures in the 1980s and 1990s.

Though not every bank is sued upon closure, when it does happen, he said, “They’ve got a three-year statute of limitations to do something about it … and we’re coming up on that with a lot of banks, so I think there’s going to be a flurry of activity over the next two or three years, then I think it may calm back down some.”

It’s a niche that grew from experience gained at previous firms at which he worked over the years, such as Armstrong Allen; Humphreys, Dunlap, Wellford, Acuff & Stanton; and McDonnell Dyer.

Montgomery was born in Jacksonville, Fla., and raised in Atlanta. Planning all along to be an attorney, he knew it was important to find an undergraduate program with a high acceptance rate into law school. With an acceptance rate of 90 percent, that school turned out to beGeorgia Tech, where he studied management and took the mound as pitcher for the Yellow Jackets baseball team for four years.

After graduating with a Bachelor of Science in industrial management, with honors, in 1978, he went to Emory University Law School and, while there, interviewed with Armstrong Allen, the firm that would bring him to Memphis . . . (read more)