New York Attorney Malpractice Blog

Anthony E. Davis of Hinshaw & Culbertson LLPm is a well known practitioner in the Professional Responsibility field. He is the past president of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers, a columnist in the New York Law Journal and an expert witness.

He writes today on the question of retired attorneys in New York who certify that they are retired, usually in order to avoid paying bi-annual fees to the UCA. He notes that the decision to permit retired attorneys to use a professional letterhead creates potential legal malpractice problems. The column appears in today's NYLJ.

OCA issued this rule over the new years vacation, but no one should miss the significance of movant's obligation to comply. New York Civil Law Blog reports it, and includes an OCA press release. It is also mentioned in Sui Generis

Here are a series of legal malpractice articles by John Blumberg reprinted from another site.

Here's a fascinating article on how to avoid Legal Malpractice from the National Law Journal. Here is the article.

Attorneys charge clients for disbursements. These disbursements may be court fees, fees for court transcripts, for deposition transcripts, for photocopying, for telefaxes, for telephone service, for computerized legal research, for postage, for messengers, for meals, for lodging, and for other necessities.

In a recent successful case, plaintiff was a large real estate management company. Plaintiff was involved in a 500 million dollar financing involving 3 NYC downtown buildings. The general counsel asked one of the multiple large firms whether "mortgage spreading" could be used to avoid payment of new mortgage tax. When told "no", the financing continued to closing. At closing it was determined that $1.7 million in mortgage tax could have been legally avoided, contrary to the advice. Prior to jury selection this case settled for $ 900,000.

A common law retaining lien entitles the outgoing attorney to retain all papers, securities, or money belonging to the client that came into the attorney's possession in the course of representation, as security for payment of attorney's fees. Arising from Judiciary Law 475, it is enforceable only by retention of the items themselves and is lost if the file or documents are no longer in the attorney's possession.

It is the general rule in the United States, and New York that the client, either for good cause or for no cause, may terminate an attorney's representation at any time.

A common law retaining lien, known also as a "general possessory lien" entitles the outgoing attorney to "retain all papers, securities, or money belonging to the client" that came into the attorney's possession in the course of representation, as security for payment of attorney's fees"

Good cause for termination is not the same as malpractice. Attorney malpractice, the deviation from good and accepted practice, which proximately damaged the party,