Springfield law firm loses opening round in dispute with its insurer
A Springfield law firm insists that its commercial liability policy covers its dispute with a former partner who accusesthe firm of not living up to the financial terms of his retirement. But a federal judge ... Read More →
Plan for Future Malpractice Claims Resulting from COVID-19
With the emergence of the novel COVID-19 pandemic, there will likely also be a surge of legal malpractice claims in the future according to insurance broker Ames & Gough; the survey results of its 10th ... Read More →
Billing Hours During COVID-19
The novel COVID-19 pandemic has affected lives all across the globe, and it is likely that the outbreak has also affected your relationship with your attorney, whether you realize it or not. Since March 10, ... Read More →
History of Liability to Nonclients
What follows is a brief history of an attorney’s liability to nonclients in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Generally, an attorney owes a duty of care only to clients, but an attorney may owe a duty ... Read More →
When Expert Testimony May be Required in a Legal Malpractice Claim
In legal malpractice cases, the narrow exception for gross or obvious errors is limited to circumstances in which an attorney failed to perform an obvious, usually ministerial task, such as missing a filing deadline. In ... Read More →
The Failure to Achieve a Particular Result in Negotiations on Behalf of a Client is Not Malpractice
In Jenkins v. Bakst, the plaintiff brought a legal malpractice suit against his attorney. Jenkins v. Bakst, 130 N.E.3d 199 (Mass. App. 2019). The plaintiff alleged that the defendant was negligent in negotiating the stock ... Read More →
A Legal Malpractice Case Born of Bad Communication
This is a real situation, for which I have masked the identity of the parties, and slightly altered the facts to make the teaching point effectively. The client, Alice was operating her car in her ... Read More →
Get It In Writing: Managing Lawyer-Client Expectations
If you have a good general understanding of how your car works, and you have done some repair work yourself, taking your car to be repaired is less daunting than it is for those of ... Read More →
Do Lawyers Owe a Duty of Care to Non-Clients?
With some exceptions, no. Usually, the first element of a successful legal malpractice claim is proof that there was an attorney-client relationship between the lawyer and the victim of the lawyer’s bad advice. Historically, courts ... Read More →
The Client Security Board: Court of Last Resort?
When we talk about legal malpractice, we usually refer to negligence, which in layman’s terms means a mistake or an unforeseen event. In the legal sense, a mistake represents a lack of proper care or ... Read More →
