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LEGAL MALPRACTICE
Like all professionals, attorneys make mistakes. Some of these mistakes are harmless or can be easily fixed without affecting the outcome of a client’s case or matter. In other cases, however, legal malpractice causes clients to lose valid claims, defenses, or assets. These mistakes can cost clients thousands or millions of dollars. Our Kansas City attorneys have handled numerous legal-malpractice claims and have recovered millions for clients who have been damaged by attorney malpractice.
A legal malpractice claim requires more than dissatisfaction with your attorney or the result of your case or matter. Legal malpractice is defined under Missouri law as the failure of an attorney to exercise the degree of care, skill, and learning in representing a client that is ordinarily exercised by other attorneys under the same or similar circumstances.
A client can only bring a legal malpractice claim in Missouri when the following four elements exist:
There must be an attorney-client relationship;
The defendant lawyer must have acted negligently or in breach of contract;
Those acts must have been the proximate cause of the client’s damages;
But for the attorney’s conduct, the client would have been successful in his or her claim.
Legal malpractice cases often end up being a “case within a case,” requiring the attorney handling the malpractice claim to show that another attorney erred and that the underlying claim or transaction would have been successful without the error.
Legal malpractice claims in Kansas and Missouri can arise in many ways. Examples include:
Failure to meet time deadlines
Errors in drafting legal documents and contracts
Violation of fiduciary duties and responsibilities
Inadequate knowledge of the law
Overbilling or fraudulent timekeeping
Failing to inform a client of a settlement offer
Failure to enlist the appropriate experts in cases where experts are required
Suing the wrong party
Mishandling of client funds
Breach of duty
Conflicts of Interest
