Legal Malpractice

The Most Common Cause of Legal Malpractice

By (Andrew Lavoott Bluestone)

Court calendaring...being in court on all assigned conferences, motions, hearings, appearances , is the most frequent source of legal malpractice cases.  Right behind are the late filings, blown statutes, and missed deadlines for documents. 

Here, a big law managing clerk discusses a calendar system for a world wide law firm.  Its hard to believe that in their California office there was no system in place at all. "We began by focusing on our Palo Alto office, which did not have any system in place

"When it comes to errors and potential malpractice claims, court calendars represent one of the most likely areas where law firms can trip themselves up. Many firms, from the smaller boutiques to mega litigation operations, unknowingly expose themselves to date error and malpractice risk because of the way they oversee their court calendars.

In the most recent "Profile of Legal Malpractice Claims," the American Bar Association found that calendar- and deadline-related errors are the leading cause of legal malpractice claims. A total of 16.63 percent of those malpractice claims were due to the firm not knowing or not properly responding to the court calendar. Of those, 7.09 percent were for failure to know/ascertain a deadline; 5.19 percent were for failure to calendar properly; and 4.35 percent were for failure to react to the calendar.

At my firm, it was concern over malpractice risk and exposure that led to a major undertaking -- revamping the way that many of our U.S. offices manage their court calendars. Happily, we are also gaining firmwide efficiencies at the same time. White & Case has 37 offices in 25 countries with a total of 2,300 lawyers. In the United States, we have 770 attorneys in five offices, including our headquarters in New York."

Full post as published by New York Attorney Malpractice Blog on October 21, 2008 (boomark / email).