If you lose in your legal case, you may be unhappy with your attorney. You may also wonder if you have any legal recourse against him or her for losing your case. After all, there is the option of legal malpractice.
According to Plaintiff Magazine, filing a legal malpractice claim against an attorney will not work if your only reason to take the action is that you are unhappy with the verdict in your case. The standards for filing a claim are much higher than a client’s satisfaction level.
Standard of care
As with medical malpractice, there is a standard of care in legal cases that you must show the attorney did not meet. This standard is that your attorney should have used his or her skills, knowledge and abilities to handle your case in a way that an average attorney would. Providing malpractice requires showing a legal failure on the part of your attorney.
Your case
If you look at what happened in your case, was your attorney’s loss simply because the other side did a better job? If so, then you probably do not have a malpractice claim. However, if your attorney did not take certain reasonable actions or was constantly not doing something you would expect an attorney to do when handling a case, then you may have a claim.
Filing malpractice against every attorney who loses a case does not make sense because in every case someone will lose. That is why there are such strict standards in place. A malpractice claim is only valid in those cases where the attorney did a horrible job of practicing law.
