Covington & Burling LLP operates as a limited liability partnership worldwide, with the practice in England and Wales conducted by an affiliated
limited liability multinational partnership, Covington & Burling LLP, which is formed under the laws of the State of Delaware in the United States
and authorized and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority with registration number 77071..
John Buchanan, senior counsel in Covington's Washington office and the firm's first Insurance Practice Group Coordinator, has represented policyholders in insurance coverage advocacy, dispute resolution and counseling for nearly four decades. His practice has ranged from the early DES and asbestos coverage litigation to claims for some of the largest cyber losses in history. John has litigated, arbitrated or negotiated a wide variety of complex property and casualty insurance claims, from railroad derailment claims to satellite-in-orbit claims, and from silver-theft claims to cyber claims. The National Law Journal named him an Insurance Trailblazer in 2021, and Best Lawyers has twice named him Washington Insurance Lawyer of the Year. Chambers USA has also consistently recognized him in its national rankings for insurance coverage lawyers (currently as Senior Statesman, previously in Band 1), as have Best of the Best USA, Who’s Who Legal and other peer reviewed lawyer registries.
John became involved with emerging cyber-related coverage issues in the mid-1990s and co-authored one of the earliest treatise chapters on cyber insurance coverage in 2001. Starting with the network intrusion and payment card thefts discovered by TJX in 2006, he has represented policyholders pursuing claims for losses arising from data breaches reported to involve tens of millions of compromised records. John also regularly advises businesses in the management of their cyber and cyber-physical risks, such as those arising from products or services involving the Internet of Things (IoT)-, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs), and the Metaverse or “Web3.”
John speaks and writes frequently on novel or emerging risks, including in recent years the insurance issues arising from the Metaverse, the COVID-19 pandemic, AI and robotics, “InsurTech,” CAVs, the IoT, blockchain, drones, and social engineering fraud. He has taught a graduate-level course on Insurance Litigation at U.Conn. Law School’s Insurance Law Center, and he co-chaired the American College of Coverage Counsel/U.Conn. Virtual Mini-Symposium on pandemic liability coverage in late 2020.
Among other bar activities, John has served as an appointed Adviser to the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law of Liability Insurance, as well as on the Members' Consultative Groups for the ALI’s Compliance, Enforcement, and Risk Management Principles project and the Restatement (Third) of Torts. He currently co-chairs the Cyber Subcommittee of the ABA Litigation Section’s Insurance Coverage Litigation Committee (ICLC), as well as the Cyber, Computer & Emerging Risks Committee of the American College of Coverage Counsel, of which he is an elected Fellow. He has also served on the ABA Dispute Resolution Section’s Task Force on Improving Mediation Quality; as an elected member of the Steering Committee of the Law Practice Management Section of the DC Bar; on the ABA Task Force for a Manual on Complex Insurance Coverage Litigation; on the Nomination Committee of the ACCC; and in various leadership roles for the ICLC, including as past Website Co-Editor-in-Chief and Co-chair of its annual meeting.
John is a graduate of Harvard Law School, Oxford University, and Princeton University. After clerking on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, he has spent his entire legal career at Covington.
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