Bronx Accident Attorney.com

What is legal malpractice?

Legal malpractice is the term for negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, or breach of contract by an attorney that causes harm to his or her client. In order to rise to an actionable level of negligence, the injured party must show that the attorney's acts were not merely the result of poor strategy, but that they were the result of errors that no reasonable attorney would make.

Furthermore, legal malpractice requires the showing of an injury that would not have happened had the attorney not been negligent; that is, it would not have happened "but for" the attorney's negligence ("but for" causation). If the injury would have occurred despite different (non-negligent) actions by the attorney, no cause of action will be permitted. "But for" or actual causation can be extremely difficult to prove and usually results in "trial-within-a-trial" situations which delve deeply into the facts of the case for which the client originally retained the attorney. For example, a person convicted of a crime who then sues his defense attorney must first prove that he was factually innocent and that he was convicted only because of his attorney's negligence. And a plaintiff who lost a civil case must prove that she had a valid case all along, which she lost only because of her attorney's negligence, so that she can then recover from her attorney all the damages which she was entitled to from the original defendant.

Legal malpractice can also occur when an attorney breaches a fiduciary duty to his or her client. This occurs when attorneys act in their own interest instead of to their client's, to the detriment of their client. A claim for legal malpractice may also arise when an attorney breaches the contract they sign with their client.

A common basis for a legal malpractice claim arises where an attorney misses a deadline for a filing of a paper with the court, such as a statute of limitations, and this error is related to the loss of the client's cause of action.

Source - Wikipedia

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