Boston Legal Malpractice Lawyer
This blogsite has been created by the Attorney, to educate readers about developments in the law pertaining to negligence in the practice of law, also known as legal malpractice. The blog will review and analyze cases and other related issues both in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the New England states and in other jurisdictions throughout the U.S.
The blog will provide readers with information about local and national issues, which will hopefully educate and inform readers about the law of legal negligence, and some of the issues, which must be addressed in determining whether or not conduct by an attorney would give rise to valid and actionable claims.
There are many instances when a client has received an unfavarable result in a lawsuit, and the natural inclination is to blame the lawyer for the outcome. Although It is usually the attorney who has control of the progress of the suit and whose stategy comes into play in decisions how a trial takes place, it is not the usual case that these decisions rise to a lefel of actionavble negligence.
The situation is not unlike a medical malpractice case, where a patient is warned of the foreseeable dangers of a high risk procedure, but elects to go forward anyway. If the foreseen risk occurs, there is unlikely to be an actionable claim against the doctor. Mistakes do happen in medicine and in the law. The question is whether the mistake rises to a level where a fellow attorney with knowledge and experience in the particular field would give an opinion that the acts or omissions fall below the standard or duty of care required.
However, the analysis does not stop there. In a legal negligence case, there is a second level of proof involving the underlying case, often called the ‘case within the case’. In order to prevail in a legal malpractice action, it must be shown that the breach of duty of the attorney was the cause of damages to the client. This means the client is required to demonstrate that the underlying case was meritorious, or in other words, was winnable and would have resulted in recoverable damages.
The attorney has been representing clients who have claims against their former attorneys for over twenty years and has obtained six and seven figure settlements and judgments after trial, which indicate his knowledge and expertise in the field.