It's hard to imagine how a company can make a business model out of saving people's licenses, but Save My License is hoping you'll buy their annual "insurance" policy to provide you with legal help in case you're fined or your license is in danger of being revoked.

While you may have access to Errors and Omissions insurance through your broker, that doesn't mean you get the attorney of your choice or help with fines.

With this in mind, SML Holding has launched a new service designed specifically to help professionals "save their licenses, their careers, their good name, and their livelihood from state board and administrative regulatory actions."

Save My License enables licensed professionals in almost any state-licensed occupation to receive up to $100,000 in costs and legal fees to defend against any state or national board, administrative, or regulatory action that threatens their license.

Offering different levels of protection for low, mid, and high-risk careers, Save My License members can protect their professional license(s) with plans that are offered in protection levels of $25,000, $50,000, and $100,000 and start at $49 per year. Plans also include protection against ordered fines and restitution up to $5,000.

Explains Raymond Miller, president of SaveMyLicense.com, "The legal expenses for just one nuisance complaint could be enough to ruin someone financially. According to our research, which is based on policy reviews, even if the individual licensee potentially has coverage in their malpractice insurance, such coverage is very limited, will never allow defendants to choose their own attorney, and will never assist them in the payment of fines or restitution. Save My License covers this critical loophole, providing the peace-of-mind professionals need when challenges occur."

The company explains that it is not an insurance company. "Rather, it is a member organization and professional society of licensed professionals. Members are afforded legal defense services through a proprietary network of outside law firms throughout the United States."

Should a licensing board action be brought against the member, SaveMyLicense.com connects the member with a highly-rated, qualified local attorney or allows them to select their own. From the first day and the first dollar of expense, SaveMyLicense.com covers all fees incurred as part of the member's legal defense, up to and including the contracted amount.

There's just one problem -- not many real estate licensees are threatened with losing their licenses. Real estate commissions tend to provide fair hearings. They don't pull licenses for no reason.

Out of 2.4 million licensees, according to ARELLO.org, about one in six or 462,774 are licensed in California, the nation's most populous state. Yet for the entire year of 2005 -- record-breaking year for housing sales, housing prices, and numbers of transactions, only 236 license revocations occurred.

Miller counters that while there may not be many revocations, there are a number of actions brought against licensees that are expensive to defend. "Losing your license is worse than getting sued," he says.

Explains Joe McClary, director of technology and education for Association of Real Estate Licensing Law Officials, ARELLO, a revocation of a license isn't performed unless a hearing is given and the commission rules, and even then there is an appeals process the licensee can use.

"The commissions have a number of actions to choose from -- they can impose fines, censures, revocations and other sanctions," says McClary. "They are here to protect the public, but they aren't out to get people. To get a license revoked has to be pretty serious, something that harms the public like fraud."

Even then, licensees can take advantage of an appeals process, so they have due process at multiple levels.

The best recourse? Here are a few suggestions:

• Follow your state commissions rules.

• Make sure you disclose whom you represent (your agency representation) to all parties.

• Be careful in dual agency/facilitator situations that all parties consent.

• Don't embellish, alter or conceal data.

• Don't collude with other service providers to "make a deal" happen.

• Don't play lawyer and write changes to the purchase contract.

• Ask your broker or your commission's attorney when you need advice.

Published: August 10, 2006

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