When you appoint an attorney to help you with a legal case, it is likely that you trust this professional to take your problems on and solve them for you. A client’s relationship with an attorney is one of trust, and this means that attorneys have many responsibilities that they must fulfill. However, in the same light, relationships between attorneys and their clients can be complex. There can be some miscommunications that lead to legal disputes.
If you have had a disagreement with your attorney, or you believe that your attorney has engaged in legal malpractice or misconduct, it is important that you take the time to understand what legal malpractice looks like and how it most commonly occurs.
How does legal malpractice commonly occur?
One of the most common ways for legal malpractice to occur is through a conflict of interest. This happens when an attorney may be representing multiple parties in the same incident.
For example, if an attorney is representing several different victims of a car accident, a situation may occur when the attorney feels the need to sacrifice one victim’s best interest in order to benefit another victim. This should never be tolerated in the legal environment. All attorneys have a fiduciary duty to avoid conflicts of interest.
The mistake of poor communication is another reason why many disputes between attorneys and their clients arise. As a client, your attorney has the responsibility to communicate fully with you, and he or she should never move further with a case or a decision without your full approval. If you are not fully informed about your case, and therefore not in a powerful position from which to make decisions, your attorney is doing you an injustice. Similarly, if your attorney purposefully withheld certain information from you as part of a strategic plan, you may want to consider legal action against him or her.
All clients have a legal right to be informed and treated with good intentions. If you have had a dispute with your attorney in New York, you should get informed on the ways that you could move forward.