If you have lost trust in your lawyer and are considering suing for legal negligence, there are a lot of things you should know. Personal Injury Attorney near Fountain Inn SC hold a special place in our society. Many consider them informed, admirable and able to protect our rights when they matter most. When faced with a dilemma, many of us turn to Personal Injury Attorneys near Fountain Inn SC to seek justice on our behalf. Unfortunately, not all lawyers live up to the idealized norm that has been enacted.
Anyone who has dealt with an attorney whose performance has not been ideal may be familiar with the ineffective assistance of an attorney and with legal malpractice. While these statements may seem identical, there are some key differences you should be aware of. Here's a more detailed analysis of both and what you could do if you think your lawyer has dropped the ball in your legal matter. Lawsuits for legal malpractice most often occur when a professional decision or action taken by an attorney results in losses for their clients, who will then seek to recover these losses through legal negligence action. In recent years, the Texas Supreme Court has established a limited exception to the privacy rule in the context of heritage.
For example, suppose that an attorney negligently drafts estate planning documents that expose the client to significant estate taxes that would have been avoided with properly drafted documents. If the negligence doesn't come to light until the documents take effect after the client's death, who can hold the lawyer responsible? In these situations, the estate's personal representative may file a lawsuit for legal negligence against the attorney. Although the representative is not an individual client, he puts himself in the shoes of the deceased customer and acts on behalf of the deceased's estate. However, in such circumstances, the negligence lawsuit must be limited to the harm suffered by the estate itself.
Lawsuits for individualized damages to the beneficiaries of the estate are not actionable, because the beneficiaries were never clients of the lawyer. Even if you can't file a lawsuit for legal negligence against an attorney who wasn't your lawyer, you may still have other options for seeking legal recourse. The privacy rule does not apply in civil liability cases that are other than legal negligence. For example, Texas courts have recognized that individuals who are not clients can sue attorneys for negligent misrepresentation, fraud, or violation of the DTPA, if those causes of action would be sustainable against a defendant in general. Cases of legal negligence often arise when an attorney fails to file critical documents within a certain time frame, causing your case to be dismissed.
Other times, the lawyer may have represented you without disclosing a conflict of interest with one of the other parties, or may not have been able to include an important defendant in the demand. If an attorney doesn't conduct a sufficient investigation and doesn't discover facts that are important to a particular case, such as failing to identify a key witness, he could be liable for legal negligence. Even if an attorney is incredibly careful, lawsuits for legal malpractice come up all the time and practically can't be avoided throughout a legal career. The reasoning behind this rule is due to the high standards that lawyers must follow when representing their clients.
Just like taking legal action without a client's consent, attorneys can also be charged with legal negligence if they refuse to follow their clients' instructions. There are many different examples of conflicts of interest: not providing complete information, having a personal relationship with a member of the opposing party (client or lawyer), intentional professional misconduct of any kind, representing two parties on the same side of a dispute that have conflicting interests between them, working for a percentage of a client's business transactions instead of paying regular professional fees, etc. It is not intended to be legal advice regarding your particular problem or to replace the advice of a lawyer. If the lawyer doesn't apply a law correctly, misunderstands it, or doesn't keep up with the changes that have been made to the laws in your jurisdiction, a lawsuit may be filed for legal negligence.
It is believed that extending these obligations to those who are not clients could dilute the fiduciary relationship between the lawyer. and the customer. Essentially, a case of legal negligence seeks to show that the lawyer's representation made his client not prevail in his case and that the lawyer's incompetent representation caused harm to the client. This means that the lawyer may have been aware of certain deadlines but didn't schedule them for some reason.
Cases of missed deadlines in the legal profession are often related to the fact that lawyers do not submit documents on time. When an attorney doesn't file documents on time, their clients can lose significant amounts of money, not to mention that, in some cases, not filing documents on time can lead to a case being completely dismissed by the courts. The law considers the attorney-client relationship to be a fiduciary relationship, so attorneys owe their clients the highest duty of care, loyalty and fidelity recognized by law. There are several deadlines that must be met when lawyers have to file court documents, and failure to meet these deadlines can have negative consequences for their clients and, in turn, for them themselves.