What is Legal Malpractice?

Although legal malpractice is generally referred to as attorney negligence, it can occur in any area of the law and can take many forms such as simple negligence, gross negligence, negligence per se, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, and violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA).

Clients can be damaged by lawyers in many ways such as:

• Neglect -missing a statute of limitation, failing to conduct and respond to discovery, failing to designate experts and/or proper witnesses;
• Lawyer's conflict of interest-putting the lawyer's interests above a client's or putting one client's interest over another's;
• Drafting errors in documents and/or agreements.

The most common types of mistakes are:

• Conflicts of interest among 'joint clients';
• Failure to know the substantive law;
• Failure to get a client's consent or to inform the client;
• Failure to calendar events;
• Not knowing or observing a deadline;
• Insufficient discovery and/or investigation;
• Failure to properly prepare documents.

Most legal malpractice errors occur through:

• Administrative errors (among them: failure to calendar, clerical error, procrastination);
• Substantive errors (such as: failure to know the law, conflict of interest);
• Client relations (not following client instructions, improper withdrawal);
• Intentional wrong doing such as libel, civil rights, fraud, theft, malicious prosecution.

In Texas, the general rule is that legal malpractice cases must be brought within two years from the time the injured party knew or should have known of the legal malpractice. This means that the injured party must file suit within that time period. There are, however, some equitable remedies that may extend the time for filing suit.

If you believe that you may have a legal malpractice loss, contact
Robert J. Myers & Associates today !