Legal Malpractice: What You Need to Know
At Munro Byrd, P.C., we handle a wide variety of personal injury cases, including car and truck collisions, fall injuries, and medical malpractice. In addition to these areas, we often evaluate legal malpractice cases—situations where a lawyer may have mishandled a client’s case and jeopardized a likely recovery. This post provides an overview of legal malpractice claims, including the general duties lawyers owe their clients and the statute of limitations for these cases. While these are challenging and often sensitive cases, this post summarizes the essential law that applies.
What is Legal Malpractice?
Legal malpractice arises when a lawyer assumes the legal duty to represent a client in a specific legal matter, typically through a written contract, and then breaches those obligations in some material, provable way. In Virginia, legal malpractice is essentially treated as a breach of contract. Even though these cases often implicate the lawyer’s ethical or professional duties, the contract with the client is the foundation of the claim. So, to prove a legal malpractice case, the client must show the lawyer breached the contract by not handling the matter as agreed.
The Lawyer’s Duty of Care
Although legal malpractice typically requires a contractual relationship, lawyers are held to professional standards that are not always explicitly stated within the contract. Broadly, lawyers always owe clients a duty to act with a reasonable degree of care, skill, and diligence when handling their cases. In simple terms, an attorney must exercise reasonable care in managing a case. This professional obligation is why legal malpractice cases, while based on contract, are described as “sounding in tort” by the Virginia Supreme Court, similar to medical malpractice.
Statute of Limitations: When Must You Act?
The time limits for filing legal malpractice claims mirror those for breach of contract cases. In Virginia, you generally have five years to file a lawsuit from the date of a breach of a written contract, and three years for an oral or implied contract. Because legal malpractice claims also “sound in tort,” the statute of limitations can be extended under the continuing representation rule. This rule delays the start of the limitations period until the attorney has rendered their “last professional services” to the client related to the specific case in question.
The “Case-Within-a-Case” Proof Challenge
As with all injured plaintiffs, the person bringing the claim has the burden to prove its elements, including the duty, breach, and resulting injury. As to the injury resulting from the malpractice, the burden is challenging. Legal malpractice cases are often described as a “case-within-a-case.” This is because an injured client must prove not just the malpractice itself, but the damages to the outcome of original, underlying case that was botched. When evaluating such claims, we investigate whether the original case had a chance of success, what it likely would have been worth, and what precisely went wrong. Then, we determine not only whether the original lawyer breached the required standard of care, but whether the injured client can prove what the original case’s outcome likely would have been but for the negligence.
In summary, to prevail in a legal malpractice suit, a plaintiff must prove several “elements”: 1) the lawyer failed to meet the professional standard of care, 2) this failure was a proximate cause of harm to the client’s case, and 3) how the plaintiff suffered damages as a result. Most cases often have a range of potential outcomes. Thus, this causational analysis requires extensive experience litigating cases before judges and juries, because we must prove the likely but hypothetical outcomes of the underlying, damaged claim or case.
Where We Practice
Munro Byrd, P.C. represents clients in malpractice and personal injury matters throughout Virginia. Our attorneys serve areas such as Roanoke City and County, Montgomery County (including Christiansburg and Blacksburg), Lynchburg, Abingdon, Martinsville, Rocky Mount, Wytheville, Bedford, Covington, Harrisonburg, Richmond, Charlottesville, Lexington, Staunton, and many others. We also handle cases in Virginia federal courts, including divisions in Roanoke, Abingdon, Danville, Harrisonburg, Charlottesville, Alexandria, and Richmond.
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If you have questions about a potential legal malpractice claim or want to consult with our team, contact Munro Byrd, P.C. for a confidential evaluation.