Legal Profession Commons^™

Foreword: Legal Malpractice Is No Longer The Profession's Dirty Little Secret, Susan Saab Fortney

Faculty Scholarship

In 1994, Professor Manuel R. Ramos published a law review article called, Legal Malpractice: The Profession's Dirty Little Secret. As suggested by the title, Professor Ramos argued that legal malpractice was a "taboo subject" that has been "ignored by the legal profession, law schools, mandatory continuing legal education ("CLE") programs, and even by scholarly and lay publications." Thirty years later, legal malpractice is an ever-present threat that lawyers cannot afford to ignore.

A First Look At The Proposed 'Fraudulent Joinder Prevention Act Of 2015', Arthur D. Hellman

Testimony

Almost half a century ago, the American Law Institute observed, “The most marked abuse has been joinder of a party of the same citizenship as plaintiff in order to defeat removal on the basis of diversity jurisdiction. Such tactics have led to much litigation, largely futile, on the question of fraudulent joinder.” Over the last half century, the volume of litigation on this question has only increased. In response, Congress is now actively considering legislation to address the problem of fraudulent joinder.

The bill is H.R. 3624, the “Fraudulent Joinder Prevention Act of 2015” (FJPA). The FJPA seeks to prevent …

Liability Insurer Data As A Window On Lawyers’ Professional Liability, Tom Baker, Rick Swedloff

All Faculty Scholarship

Using the best publicly available data on lawyers’ liability claims and insurance – from the largest insurer of large law firms in the U.S., the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Professional Liability, and a summary of large claims from a leading insurance broker–this article reports the frequency of lawyers’ liability claims, the distribution and cost of claims by type of practice, the disposition of claims, and lawyers liability insurance premiums from the early 1980s to 2013. Notable findings include remarkable stability over thirty years in the distribution of claims by area of practice among both small and large firms, …

When The Lawyer Screws Up: A Portrait Of Legal Malpractice Claims And Their Resolution, Herbert M. Kritzer, Neil Vidmar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Lawyers On Trial: Juror Hostility To Defendants In Legal Malpractice Trials, Herbert M. Kritzer, Neil Vidmar

Faculty Scholarship

In contrast to medical malpractice, legal malpractice is a phenomenon that has attracted little attention from empirically-oriented scholars. This paper is part of a larger study of legal malpractice claiming and litigation. Given the evidence on the frequency of legal malpractice claims, there are surprisingly few legal malpractice cases that result in jury verdicts. There are many possible explanations for this, one of which reflects the perception that lawyers are held in such low esteem by potential jurors that they risk harsh treatment by jurors when they are defendants in legal malpractice trials. Because we could find no empirical evidence …