Law Commons^™

Book Review Of Lawyers In The Dock: Learning From Attorney Disciplinary Proceedings, By Richard L. Abel, Eli Wald

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Patient Negligence, Michele Goodwin, L. Song Richardson

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

Attorney Referral, Negligence, And Vicarious Liability, Bruce Ching

Journal Articles

As a consequence of requests from clients or prospective clients, lawyers are often placed in a position of giving referrals, especially in situations of cross-specialty referrals (such as an estate planning attorney whose longtime client has become a party in a personal injury lawsuit) or cross-jurisdictional referrals (such as an attorney in Michigan who is contacted by a prospective client who must respond to a lawsuit that was filed in Ohio).

But if the lawyer who receives the referral commits malpractice in handling the case, can the lawyer who made the referral be held liable for the client's loss? This …

My Lawyer Told Me To Say I'M Sorry: Lawyers, Doctors, And Medical Apologies, Peter B. Knapp

Faculty Scholarship

The role of apologies in litigation has received a great deal of attention in the last ten years. This is particularly true of “medical apologies,” those expressions of regret and, in some cases, admissions of responsibility made by health care professionals. Two recent trends have prompted examination of medical apologies. First, widely reported empirical studies suggest that patients and their families may be less likely to bring malpractice lawsuits following adverse outcomes if treating physicians have apologized. Second, over about the past ten years, two-thirds of the states have adopted statutes that exclude these apologies from evidence if there is …

Juries And Medical Malpractice Claims: Empirical Facts Versus Myths, Neil Vidmar

Faculty Scholarship

Juries in medical malpractice trials are viewed as incompetent, anti-doctor, irresponsible in awarding damages to patients, and casting a threatening shadow over the settlement process. Several decades of systematic empirical research yields little support for these claims. This article summarizes those findings. Doctors win about three cases of four that go to trial. Juries are skeptical about inflated claims. Jury verdicts on negligence are roughly similar to assessments made by medical experts and judges. Damage awards tend to correlate positively with the severity of injury. There are defensible reasons for large damage awards. Moreover, the largest awards are typically settled …

Professional Malpractice In A World Of Amateurs, Thomas D. Morgan

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

An increasing number of tasks once reserved to lawyers are now being performed by non-lawyers. That reality seems likely to continue. The question then becomes against what standard of performance such “amateur” practice should be assessed. One answer might be that a non-lawyer should be guilty of malpractice if the work is performed below the level of quality to which a lawyer would be held. This paper argues that the work should instead be judged against the standard of performance the non-lawyer purported to be able to deliver.