The Law Office of Brian S. Laviage

Texas Legal Malpractice

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Under Texas Law a lawyer commits professional malpractice when he or she acts in a negligent manner when offering or giving legal services, advice, or representation to a client or POTENTIAL CLIENT.

The following are the general elements of Texas Legal Malpractice:

1. That at the time of the malpractice there was an attorney client relationship;

2. Some type of negligence must have occured on the part of the lawyer or lawyer's staff in the legal representation of the plaintiff (you the client);

3. The resulting negligence must have been the sole and only cause of any resulting damages;

4. Damages must have resulted.

A TEXAS LEGAL MALPRACTICE CASE IN ACTION

Proving Texas Legal Malpractice

1. The first thing a plaintiff must accomplish is to prove that an attorney client relationship existed at the time of the negligence. Without the existence of this relationship, there is no way to show that the negligent lawyer had a duty that he or she owed to the client. Therefore, no basis for a malpractice action exists.

2. Next, we must look to the "standard of care" which all lawyers should adhere to when representing a client, and subsequently show that the attorney violated that standard of care. Often this is an easy thing to see. Other times it is something difficult to establish. Since the very nature of legal representation is complex, it is sometimes necessary to retain an expert witness to better testify as to what the standard of care is in a particular situation.

3. Next, it is vital to show how a particular plaintiff suffered an injury as a proximate result of his or her lawyer's negligence. In essence one must show how the injury claimed followed from the lawyer's misconduct. Sometimes this connection is tenuous at best. In a situation where an alleged act of negligence and the harm suffered is speculative, hypothesized, or extremely attenuated, it more often than not will support a malpractice claim; like in all negligence case against an attorney or not, the injury suffered must ordinarily be a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the defendant's (here an attorney's) negligence.

4. Lastly, any plaintiff in a legal malpractice case must prove that damages resulted because of the legal malpractice. In addition, that the type of damages suffered must be the typical kind of damages the result from legal malpractice. If the plaintiff is unable to show that damages resulted from the lawyer's negligence the lawyer will typically be successful in dismissing the case.

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