Legal Malpractice Lawyers

The California Bar sets guidelines that determine the standards members of the legal profession are expected to meet. The Bar promulgates ethics rules are that are designed to protect the consumers of legal services. When a member of the legal profession acts improperly or unethically and violates the rules and standards of the profession, and a client suffers losses as a result, the client can sue the lawyer for legal malpractice.

Understandably, many lawyers prefer not to accept this type of case against one of their colleagues. It is however, important to the client as well as to the reputation of the legal profession as a whole that we hold lawyers to a high standard of client care and ethics. At Abronson Law, we actively pursue legal malpractice cases, because every client deserves the best legal representation and because we can’t allow the negligent behavior of a few bad apples to ruin the reputation of an entire profession.

The term legal malpractice encompasses lawyer negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, or breach of contract when the lawyer’s act cause demonstrable harm to a client. This does not mean that any time your lawyer loses your case you can sue for malpractice. Law, by its nature, is adversarial, and every case has winners and losers. Simply because the strategy the lawyer used was unsuccessful is not grounds for a malpractice action. To show malpractice, the claimant has to demonstrate that the lawyer’s acts were errors that no reasonable attorney would make.

Elements Of Legal Malpractice

You must be able to prove these elements to win a legal malpractice case:

• That an attorney-client relationship existed
• That the attorney was negligent in the legal representation of the client
• That the attorney’s negligence was the proximate cause of an injury
• That the client suffered actual and measurable losses as a result of the negligence and that without the attorney’s wrongful behavior, the client would have been successful in the case in which the negligence occurred

Attorney Acts And Omissions That Give Rise To Legal Malpractice Actions

• Failure to file suit within the statute of limitations
• Missing filing deadlines during litigation
• Failure to engage experts or consult witnesses
• Failure to communicate with a client.
• Failure to reveal or resolve a conflict of interest
• Ignorance of the law, or failure to conduct research
• Abuse or misuse of a trust account; comingling trust account funds with the attorney’s personal funds
  Dropping a client inappropriately

When you hire a lawyer to represent you, you have the right to expect that the lawyer is skilled, knowledgeable, ethical, and dedicated and can be counted on to use every legal and ethical means available to achieve a favorable outcome.

An unethical, incompetent, overworked, or unfocused attorney can cause financial loss, stress, and many other damages, depending on the subject matter of the case. The lawyers at the Abronson Law Offices in San Jose are committed to making things as close to right as possible by fighting for monetary compensation for all that you’ve lost. We accept legal malpractice cases in Santa Clara County and throughout the entire Bay Area.

We understand that when you’ve suffered a loss at the hands of an incompetent attorney you may be concerned with the additional expense of representation in a malpractice action. We offer flexible payment options and will work with you to arrive at a payment schedule that fits your situation. In many cases, we can work on a contingent fee basis so our payment comes out of your recovery.