When hiring a lawyer we hope to have a trusted advocate handling our legal issue. Of course, like anyone, lawyers sometimes make mistakes. Those mistakes sometimes come in the form of giving clients bad advice. Receiving poor counsel from your attorney can have significant repercussions, both for your immediate legal issue and elsewhere in your life. The question then becomes, if an attorney gives bad advice, what recourse does the client have? The legal malpractice attorneys of Stanfield Bechtel Law can take a look at this issue.
What Constitutes Bad Advice?
It’s important to remember that lawyers do not have a crystal ball by which they can see the future consequences of the advice they give. In a best case scenario, the lawyer’s advice will work out by resolving the legal issue without major problems (if any) for the client. In reality, however, the advice may not turn out to be suited for the legal matter.
Bad advice may rise to the level of legal malpractice in certain circumstances, but not always. Advice that is the product of careful deliberation, produced by diligent consideration of the facts and proper application of the law, and with clear communication between the lawyer and client, could end up not working. After all, even the best arguments do not always persuade a judge or jury. But that doesn’t mean the lawyer has committed malpractice. Here are some examples of when bad advice may qualify as legal malpractice.
Examples of Bad Advice and Malpractice
To understand the difference between advice that simply doesn’t work out versus bad advice for purposes of legal malpractice, consider some examples of the latter. They include:
- Using improper legal authority, including laws or court opinions from other jurisdictions
- Applying the incorrect law or an invalid interpretation of the law to a client’s legal case
- Failing to notify the client of, and therefore missing, important court or filing deadlines
- Failing to inform clients of the statute of limitations, a deadline in which to file a lawsuit
- Failing to fully and objectively consider the known facts before rendering advice
- Failing to conduct discovery before rendering advice
- Not communicating with the client to get the information necessary to give competent advice
- Including inconsistent, ambiguous, or vague terms in a contract
- Advising a client to take actions which a competent attorney in the same or similar circumstances would not advise
Situations like these are unacceptable because they constitute a breach of the standard of care that attorneys owe their clients. Attorneys must put their clients’ interests ahead of their own and advocate for them by using their experience and training. If a lawyer is unfamiliar with a legal issue, he or she should refer the client to someone else or they may give the client bad advice.
Can I Sue My Lawyer For Bad Advice?
You have the right to sue your lawyer for bad advice that caused you harm. It will be your responsibility to demonstrate the required elements of a Connecticut legal malpractice lawsuit, which are:
- Duty: The attorney must have owed you a duty of care, which is typically evidenced by the existence of an attorney-client relationship. This relationship puts the attorney in the position of being a fiduciary, as described above.
- Breach: Next, the attorney must have breached the duty of care by committing a wrongful act or omission or by behaving in a way that deviates from the standard of care owed to the client. It is unreasonable for a lawyer to give advice with complete disregard for the facts of the case or without taking the time to properly communicate with the client.
- Causation: The breach must have been the proximate cause of the client’s harm. There must, in other words, be a direct causal link between the lawyer’s bad advice and something negative happening to the client, like losing the case or missing a filing deadline.
- Damages: Lastly, the client must be able to show that all of the above caused him or her to suffer damages. This often comes in the form of losing a lawsuit and having to pay the opposing party compensation and/or attorney’s fees and court costs. But there are other forms of damages the client may claim.
Evidence That Bad Advice Was Malpractice
The breach is typically the most hotly contested element in a legal malpractice case, so the client who was harmed by the advice must be prepared to give evidence that it was bad. Such evidence could include the following:
- The lawyer attempted to rush the case or make decisions without reasonable time to deliberate
- The lawyer was busy with other cases and didn’t have the ability to focus on the client
- There was little or no communication between the attorney and client, e.g. unanswered and unreturned phone calls and emails
- The lawyer was missing important details and should have made reasonable efforts to get more information from the client
- Discovery could have been conducted but was not, so the advice was based on incomplete or inaccurate information
- The law that was applied was incorrect or from another jurisdiction
- The lawyer failed to advise the client to file a lawsuit when he or she knew or should have known that the statute of limitations was about to run
- The lawyer gave bad advice because he or she was unfamiliar with the legal issue involved
Contact Our Connecticut Legal Malpractice Attorney
Your attorney will conduct a thorough investigation of how and why the legal malpractice happened, including by way of discovery and other methods. By acquiring the above and other forms of evidence, you can make a compelling claim for damages. If you received bad advice that caused you harm, you owe it to yourself to explore your legal options with Stanfield Bechtel Law. Call us today to get started.