Sometimes clients file a counterclaim for legal malpractice after the attorney sues for unpaid fees. Sometimes the client starts a legal malpractice case based on miscommunication. Sometimes the attorney is just plain wrong. Here is a story for your review.

There is a hierarchy of attorney malpractice mistakes, recognizable by even a layperson. At the head of the list is the failure to start an action, whether a result of failure to file a notice of claim under the General Municipal Law, The Public Authorities Law, the Court of Claims act, or other claim-notice acts. That failure may be a result of failing to file the summons and complaint, or failing to purchase a new index number for the complaint. This group of “failing to file” the case is easily recognizable to the lay juror.
Continue Reading Hierarchy of Legal Malpractice Mistakes

The most common causes of attorney malpractice litigation:

1.Poor communication with the client
Always at the base of a professional malpractice lawsuit
2.Statute of Limitations problems
3.Suing a client over the bill.
Often precipitates a malpractice lawsuit
4.Notice of Claim problems
Includes municipal, agency, Court of Claims, private notice requirements, and other condition precedent situations…

Malpractice is a professional’s failure to use minimally adequate levels of care, skill or diligence in the performance of the professional’s duties, causing harm to another. In New York, attorney malpractice is defined as a “deviation from good and accepted legal practice, where the client has been proximately damaged by that deviation, but for which, there would have been a different, better or more positive outcome.”
Continue Reading Elements of Legal Malpractice

There is no end of irony in thi line of work. Here is a legal malpractice defense and counterclaim which was essentially precluded when defendant counter-claimant was precluded from offering expert testimony. Why? Defendant missed several discovery deadlines in naming and offering the report of the expert. Here is the decision from NJ.…

Here is a defense attorney’s tale of plaintiff attorney’s legal malpractice, written in real time about a real case. Have the corporate clients moved on to a legal malpractice attorney? Time will tell. The story.

Here is a juror’s blog on his three day attorney fee-legal malpractice case. Litigants take note. He did not like the case. Full rant.

Here is the story of a really ugly attorney-attorney conflict, which teaches the lesson that attorneys can be really vicious. Recently graduated associate leaves a small plaintiff’s PI firm, and takes a fes small cases with her. Result? Employer attorney sends what in my opinion is a totally nasty letter to the clients, carefully couching…