In Massachusetts, courts are reluctant to recognize claims against your adversary’s lawyer. Occasionally people will contact Kazarian Law seeking to bring a malpractice case against an attorney with whom they have no attorney-client relationship.  An example is a caller seeking to sue the attorney who represented their ex-spouse in a divorce proceeding.  This is impermissible because legal malpractice is based on negligence law.  Therefore, a potential malpractice plaintiff must be able to show the four elements of any negligence case: duty, breach of that duty, causation of injury due to the breached duty, and damages caused by the breached duty.  Attorneys only owe a duty to their clients; therefore, the spouse of a divorcing client is not owed any duty.  If there was malfeasance by the ex-spouse’s attorney, the sole remedy for the caller in this example is to bring an ethics complaint with the state licensing board for attorneys.