You decided to file a lawsuit against a business after you slipped and fell. They offered to settle with you, but you wanted to pursue the claim by going to trial because the settlement offer was unfair.
Despite having solid evidence that you slipped and fell as a result of the business’s poor maintenance, you lost your case. Your attorney showed up unprepared, acting like he didn’t know what the case was about. Even after reminding him, he’d already irritated the judge by arriving late and looking disheveled.
Now, you believe you deserve a chance to obtain the compensation you were fighting for. You want to pursue a legal claim against the attorney for failing you, not because the case was lost, but because he wasn’t prepared.
Legal malpractice: One way to recover losses
While not getting the desired outcome of your case isn’t enough to prove legal malpractice, your case is special. You have evidence showing the attorney did not know information about your situation, came late to court and made mistakes that resulted in the loss of the case. By breaching your contract, the attorney should have to compensate you for the lost lawsuit.
For you to win a legal malpractice case, you need to show four things. First, you’ll have to prove that the attorney was working for you and owed you skillful representation. Then, you need to show how the attorney made an error or was negligent in providing services.
Following that, it’s your job to prove that the breach of contract resulted in injury to you (the loss of the case) and resulted in financial losses (the inability to collect from an at-fault party).
Here’s what you could do in this case, as an example.
First, you’d want to show that the attorney was late to court and did not know the case. For instance, if he referred to the wrong case number, the wrong scenario or other unrelated facts, you should be able to prove that he was not prepared for the case.
Next, showing that you lost the case as a result of his lack of preparation would give you the ability to collect compensation from the attorney directly, since it was his fault for not preparing a solid case for court.