3 Cs causing clients’ claims, Daily Journal

By Louie Castoria, Esq.
(April 24, 2015)

There are so many ways to get sued these days. In a study of over 42,000 U.S. legal malpractice suits reported to liability insurers from 2000 through 2007, the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Lawyers’ Professional Liability found 21 root causes of, across all practice areas. (July/August 2010 issue of Legal Practice). Only one of them accounted for more than 10 percent of the claims: “failure to know or apply the law,” at 11.3 percent of the total. That’s a relatively easy one to avoid by staying within one’s strengths, or, as a speaker at the recent ABA Legal Malpractice Conference put it, “Stick to your knitting.”

That leaves 20 other bases of malpractice claims to avoid – too numerous to make into a useful mnemonic device – but three of the major causes are perhaps easy to bear in mind, especially as they all begin with “C.”

Read more at the full article.