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Full-Text Articles in Legal Profession
From Advocate To Party - Defenses For Lawyers Who Find Themselves In Litigation, Richard J. Wilson
From Advocate To Party - Defenses For Lawyers Who Find Themselves In Litigation, Richard J. Wilson
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
Attorneys, like all professionals, face civil liability when their action or inaction causes harm to a client. When an attorney fails the client, the claim most often asserted, and the claim that is typically most appropriate, is a legal malpractice claim. A legal malpractice claim is based on negligence.' Thus, the elements of a legal malpractice claim are (1) a duty, (2) a breach of that duty, (3) the breach proximately caused injury to the plaintiff, and (4) damages occurred.
Still, attorneys find themselves in a different circumstance than the average litigant. An attorney is not responsible for the client's …
A Rebuttal To Kinsler's And To Anderson And Muller's Studies On The Purported Relationship Between Bar Passage Rates And Attorney Discipline, William Wesley Patton
A Rebuttal To Kinsler's And To Anderson And Muller's Studies On The Purported Relationship Between Bar Passage Rates And Attorney Discipline, William Wesley Patton
St. John's Law Review
(Excerpt)
Because of the escalating cost of legal education and the recent decline in bar passage rates among ABA approved law schools, some analysts have reasonably attempted to determine the social costs of legal education. Many have attempted to place the blame on segments of the legal education marketplace. The complicated relationships among the policies of providing more access to justice, increasing minority representation in the bar, and protecting the public from shoddy law practice have recently inflamed academic debate. In the rush for assessing blame, some analysts have published empirically flawed reports that have received a great deal of …
Causation And "Legal Certainty" In Legal Malpractice Law, Vincent R. Johnson
Causation And "Legal Certainty" In Legal Malpractice Law, Vincent R. Johnson
St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics
A line of California cases holds that causation of damages in legal malpractice actions must be proven with “legal certainty.” This Article argues that judicial references to legal certainty are ambiguous and threaten to undermine the fairness of legal malpractice litigation as a means for resolving lawyer-client disputes. Courts should eschew the language of legal certainty and plainly state that damages are recoverable if a legal malpractice plaintiff proves, by a preponderance of the evidence, that those losses were factually and proximately caused by the defendant’s breach of duty.
The Paragraph 20 Paradox: An Evaluation Of The Enforcement Of Ethical Rules As Substantive Law, Donald E. Campbell
The Paragraph 20 Paradox: An Evaluation Of The Enforcement Of Ethical Rules As Substantive Law, Donald E. Campbell
St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics
This Article addresses an issue courts across the country continue to struggle with: When are ethics rules appropriately considered enforceable substantive obligations, and when should they only be enforceable through the disciplinary process? The question is complicated by the ethics rules themselves. Paragraph 20 of the Scope section of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct includes seemingly contradictory guidance; it states the Rules are not to be used to establish civil liability, but also that they can be “some evidence” of a violation of a lawyer’s standard of care. Most states have adopted this paradoxal Paragraph 20 language. Consequently, courts …
Forty-Eight States Are Probably Not Wrong: An Argument For Modernizing Georgia’S Legal Malpractice Statute Of Limitations, Ben Rosichan
Forty-Eight States Are Probably Not Wrong: An Argument For Modernizing Georgia’S Legal Malpractice Statute Of Limitations, Ben Rosichan
Georgia State University Law Review
The legal profession is largely self-regulated, and each state has a bar association charged with creating and enforcing basic standards of professionalism and competence for attorneys. Unfortunately, attorneys do not always adhere to these standards. In Georgia, the State Bar can address attorney misconduct through remedial measures up to and including disbarment. The State Bar cannot, however, compensate wronged clients through monetary damages.Thus, some wronged clients must resort to a lawsuit for legal malpractice where a financial recovery is necessary to make the client whole again.
The statute of limitations for legal malpractice claims should not be so restrictive that …
Law Firm Malpractice Disclosure: Illustrations And Guidelines, Anthony V. Alfieri
Law Firm Malpractice Disclosure: Illustrations And Guidelines, Anthony V. Alfieri
Articles
No abstract provided.
Collaborative Lawyers' Duties To Screen The Appropriateness Of Collaborative Law And Obtain Clients' Informed Consent To Use Collaborative Law, John M. Lande, Forrest Steven Mosten
Collaborative Lawyers' Duties To Screen The Appropriateness Of Collaborative Law And Obtain Clients' Informed Consent To Use Collaborative Law, John M. Lande, Forrest Steven Mosten
Faculty Publications
Collaborative Law (CL) is an innovative dispute resolution process that offers significant benefits but also poses significant non-obvious risks. This Article provides a systematic analysis of these possible risks as identified in books written by CL experts, CL practice group websites, social science research, and bar association ethics opinions. In CL, the lawyers and clients sign a "participation agreement" promising to use an interest-based approach to negotiation and fully disclose all relevant information. A key element of CL is the "disqualification agreement" signed by parties (and sometimes by attorneys) which provides that both CL lawyers would be disqualified from representing …
A Cloak For The Bare: In Support Of Allowing Prospective Malpractice Liability Waivers In Certain Pro Bono Cases, Steve Berenson
A Cloak For The Bare: In Support Of Allowing Prospective Malpractice Liability Waivers In Certain Pro Bono Cases, Steve Berenson
ExpressO
No abstract provided.
A Critique Of Burrow V. Arce, Charles Silver
A Critique Of Burrow V. Arce, Charles Silver
William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review
No abstract provided.
Determining The Appropriate Time Limitations On Attorney Malpractice Lawsuits In West Virginia: A Brief Overview, Vincent Paul Cardi
Determining The Appropriate Time Limitations On Attorney Malpractice Lawsuits In West Virginia: A Brief Overview, Vincent Paul Cardi
West Virginia Law Review
No abstract provided.