Subpoenas are a routine part of claims investigations, coverage disputes and regulatory inquiries. What isn't routine is the pace at which they're arriving.
A new analysis from Wolters Kluwer CT found that U.S. subpoena volumes reached 498,000 in 2025, with growth accelerating year-over-year. After a brief 3% dip in 2020, volumes have climbed every year since, growing 13% in 2023, 10% in 2024 and 8% in 2025. Insurance is absorbing more of that increase than any other sector.
Insurance-related subpoenas grew 65% between 2019 and 2025, making them the fastest-growing category in the data. Roughly 80% of that activity is concentrated in California, Florida, Georgia and Texas. Each of these jurisdictions has its own combination of regulatory activity, litigation trends and natural disaster exposure fueling the increase.
Florida saw the sharpest increase of any state, with volumes up 86% since 2019. Hurricane claim investigations, growing demand for insurance-related records and a wave of litigation filed ahead of major tort reform measures all contributed. Much of this reflects heightened scrutiny from state regulators examining how insurers handle claims in disaster-affected areas, which generates a downstream surge in records requests and legal process activity. California volumes rose 54%, driven by insurance coverage disputes, surplus line insurer activity and new privacy compliance requirements. California's evolving regulatory landscape, particularly around data access and consumer protection, has expanded the scope of what gets subpoenaed and how quickly insurers are expected to respond.
The implications extend beyond claims departments into insurance legal operations and compliance.
How intake processes need to change
For most insurers, subpoena intake and response processes were built for a different volume environment. Many still rely on manual workflows to receive, triage and route incoming legal documents across departments and jurisdictions. Gradual increases are manageable. A 65% jump in six years exposes the limits of processes that were never designed for this pace.
Missed response deadlines create legal exposure. Misdirected documents delay claims resolution. Inconsistent handling across state lines introduces compliance risk, particularly for multi-state insurers navigating different procedural requirements in each jurisdiction. The operational cost of getting it wrong is compounding as volumes climb.
Jurisdictional complexity adds to the burden
The geographic concentration of subpoena growth creates a particular challenge for insurers that operate across states. Multi-state insurers are managing higher volumes under different rules, different timelines and different regulatory expectations in each jurisdiction.
With roughly 80% of insurance-related subpoena activity concentrated in four states, organizations with significant exposure in Florida, California, Georgia and Texas face a disproportionate operational burden. The resource allocation models and response frameworks that worked five years ago may no longer be adequate for today's volume and complexity.
What insurers should do now
The subpoena data points to a broader reality about litigation complexity that extends beyond any single sector. Regulatory scrutiny is increasing, data access expectations are broadening and legal activity in key sectors is accelerating. These are structural trends, not temporary spikes.
Insurers managing legal process intake through fragmented, manual systems are absorbing unnecessary risk. The organizations best positioned to handle this environment are the ones treating legal process management as an operational discipline rather than an administrative afterthought.
That means evaluating how subpoenas and other legal documents are received, tracked and routed across the organization. It means understanding jurisdictional requirements at a granular level and building response protocols that account for the specific procedural obligations in high-volume states. Subpoena volume trends also signal where litigation and regulatory activity are heading, which should inform how insurers staff and structure their legal process operations.
If these trends hold, the gap between current legal process volumes and most insurers' capacity to manage them will only widen. The question for insurers is whether their legal operations are built for the volume they're handling today or the volume they were handling five years ago.
