The term malpractice generally refers to negligence committed by a licensed professional. Legal malpractice is sometimes referred to as attorney negligence, it can occur in any area of the law and can take many forms such as simple negligence, gross negligence, negligence per se, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and fraud.

Clients can be damaged by lawyers in many ways such as:

• Neglect -missing a statute of limitation, failing to conduct and respond to discovery, failing to designate experts and/or proper witnesses;
• Lawyer's conflict of interest-putting the lawyer's interests above a client's or putting one client's interest over another's;
• Drafting errors in documents and/or agreements.

The most common types of mistakes are:

• Failure to know the substantive law - including negligent advise to settle;
• Failure to get a client's consent or to inform the client;
• Failure to calendar events;
• Not knowing or observing a deadline;
• Insufficient discovery and/or investigation.

Most legal malpractice occurs through:

• Administrative errors (among them: failure to calendar, clerical error, procrastination);
• Substantive errors (such as: failure to know the law, conflict of interest);
• Client relations (not following client instructions, improper withdrawal, lying to a client about the status of the lawsuit);
• Intentional wrong doing such as libel, civil rights, fraud, theft, malicious prosecution.

The time within which to bring a legal malpractice claim varies from State to State. New Jersey has a rather long statute of limitations for legal malpractice claims. They must be brought within six years of the date of the malpractice. Other State's have adopted a two year statute of limitations. Certainly there are issues that arise as to when the injured party knew or should have known of the legal malpractice. This is, however, an equitable remedy that may extend the time for filing suit but one should not delay seeking advise based upon this.

If you believe that you may have a legal malpractice case, contact our offices for a consultation.