The current business atmosphere is dominated by women leaders making significant strides in areas previously dominated by men. However, even the most accomplished leaders often face unexpected challenges, particularly when handling personal injury cases where lawyers make mistakes that cost them their case.
As human beings, personal injury lawyers are not immune from making mistakes. However, as professionals, any mistake they make should be handled diligently and expediently to mitigate potential damages to your case. Still, the duty of keeping your personal injury lawyer in check falls into your hands. As such, understanding your rights when a personal injury lawyer errs is vital when pursuing a personal injury case.
In that regard, here’s everything you need to know to identify any instances when your lawyer disregards ethical standards and the measures you can take to protect yourself.
What Are Your Rights as a Client?
As a business leader, you have basic expectations when you hire a lawyer. You expect them to be diligent in their conduct and provide the core knowledge and expertise necessary to win your case. However, you’re also entitled to several rights as a client. Some of the most notable rights when dealing with a lawyer include:
- Guidance regarding your legal circumstance
- Routine updates on the progress of your case
- An honest assessment of the costs of pursuing your claim
- Information on any delays, changes, or setbacks
- Advice on the cost/benefit evaluation of your case
What Is Legal Malpractice?
Lawyers, like all legal practitioners, are held to a general standard of professional and ethical conduct. As such, legal malpractice can be described as any situation whereby they make a grievous error in handling a case.
To prove legal malpractice, you need sufficient evidence of negligence or intent to harm that caused damages to you as the client. However, it is important to consider that there is a big difference between mistakes and legal malpractice. Some mistakes are so severe that they may hinder you from filing or winning a case and can, therefore, fall under legal malpractice.
What Types of Mistakes Do Lawyers Make?
Some of the most common mistakes lawyers make that may hinder your chances of winning your case include:
Incompetence
When you approach a lawyer, you expect them to at least have some basic knowledge of the specific laws related to your case. However, some lawyers may take advantage of your situation and take the case despite not having pertinent knowledge related to it. In such cases, these non-specialists are more likely to make serious mistakes that may hurt your case.
Missing a Statute of Limitations
A statute of limitations is the specific time limit set for filing charges against the defendant. When this time elapses, you can no longer file your case, which means you may have to forfeit any chances of getting compensated for your injuries, no matter how strong your case is.
Breaking Their Fiduciary Duty to Their Client
A lawyer’s main duty is to protect and advocate for your rights as a client. This means that they have to act in your best interests and shouldn’t undertake any actions that may harm you, particularly if those interests serve their own.
If, in any case, your attorney doesn’t fulfill their duty, including taking a case where there’s a conflict of interest or breaking attorney-client privileges, they can be said to break their fiduciary duty.
Negligence
Attorney negligence may take other forms besides those discussed above. These other forms of negligence may include making a serious error during a trial, hiring improper expert witnesses, failing to properly investigate facts, collecting fees but neglecting you as a client, showing up to work drunk or intoxicated with other substances, and much more.
Can You Sue Your Lawyer for Legal Malpractice?
The legal landscape can be quite challenging to navigate, especially if you’re not experienced in the field. Legal malpractice lawsuits are particularly difficult to win due to the tremendous amount of evidence required to prove fault. However, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t pursue the case. You just need to know how to go about it and have the necessary evidence on hand.
How to Prove Your Personal Injury Lawyer Made a Mistake
While you may expect your employees to perform their duties perfectly as stipulated in their employment contract, the legal landscape doesn’t work the same way. Your lawyer’s failure to win the case doesn’t amount to malpractice, as winning any case can never be guaranteed.
As such, winning a legal malpractice case against your lawyer requires you to prove certain crucial aspects, including:
Attorney-Client Relationship
Before you can pursue any legal action against your attorney, you must first prove you have an established attorney-client relationship. This typically involves having paid a retainer fee or signing a retainer agreement with the attorney.
Duty of Care
Your attorney is legally obligated to act in your best interests. They owe you a duty to act with reasonable care and conduct themselves professionally when handling your case. Any breach of duty of care can be termed as legal malpractice.
Breach of Duty
Your lawyer is legally required to meet specific standards when handling your case. Any violation of these professional standards can be termed as a breach of duty. This may include anything from violating their duty of care to providing inadequate legal service.
Causation
Like any personal injury case, you must prove causation. Causation implies that your attorney’s conduct or actions were the direct cause of harm. As such, you must link their breach of duty to an identifiable harm that you sustained.
Damages
In legal malpractice cases, damages imply any financial losses suffered due to your lawyer’s breach of duties.
Your Right to Fair Representation
While your attorney may not guarantee that they will win the case, they are held to a legal and professional standard to exercise their duties diligently and act in your best interests to increase your chances of winning.
However, there’s always the possibility of hiring an incompetent lawyer or having your lawyer act in their best interests instead of yours, resulting in a negative outcome for your case. If this happens, you can pursue a personal injury case against your lawyer and seek damages for any financial losses sustained as a result of their breach of duty.
