Client settles case and then turn around and sues attorney who settled the case for client, or worse (for the attorney) client settles case on his own, and then sues attorney who was already off the case. Can a client sue for legal malpractice after settling the case? The answer is yes, if the settlement was effectively compelled by the attorney’s malpractice.

Put in a more elegant way, the Appellate Term decided Garg v Wigler 2012 NY Slip Op 50494(U)
Appellate Term, First Department:

"Accepting plaintiff’s allegations as true, and according them the benefit of every favorable inference, as we must in the context of a motion to dismiss on the pleadings (see Leon v Martinez, 84 NY2d 83, 87-88 [1994]), we find the complaint, as amplified by plaintiff’s verified answers to defendant’s interrogatories, sufficient to state a cause of action for legal malpractice. The record so far developed raises triable issues as to whether defendant-attorney’s prior representation of plaintiff — including defendant’s acknowledged failure to timely file an administrative appeal following the denial of plaintiff’s claim for disability benefits — was so deficient as to compel plaintiff to settle the underlying federal lawsuit (see Jones Lang Wootten USA v LeBoeuf, Lamb, Green & MacRae, 243 AD2d 168, 175 [1998], lv dismissed 92 NY2d 962 [1998]; Whitman & Ransom v Revson, 220 AD2d 321 [1995]). "Settlement, when compelled by an attorney’s breach of the standard of care, does not present an intervening cause so as to bar a malpractice action" (Jones Lang Wooton USA, at 175). We find unavailing defendant’s contention that there are no issues of fact as to whether its malpractice, if any, caused plaintiff damages. "