This opinion of the Seventh Circuit discusses a legal malpractice case arising out of a class action. The plaintiff, Carlos Rocha, brought a class action against Federal Express. He alleged that Federal Express did not properly classify his employment. Shortly before the underlying case settled, he fired his lawyers. Rocha…
I have written before about Avvo and how frustrating it can be to be reviewed on Avvo. Often the reviews are baseless angry rants. Indeed, one of the reviews on my own Avvo profile is by a person who never engaged me (and I believe never spoke to me). My…
The Terra Museum sued its former attorneys, DLA Piper, for legal malpractice arising out of a real estate deal gone bad. Terra claimed that, due to a drafting error, it was required to pay the other party to the real estate deal millions more than it should have had to…
One of the longest-running controversies in the legal malpractice cases is whether the owner of a legal malpractice claim may assign it to another party. Once it was black letter law that a legal malpractice claim could not be assigned. In recent years courts have relaxed the rule on the…
I have written several times over the past year about the actual innocence rule, which requires a criminal defendant to prove actual innocence before he can sue his criminal defense lawyer for legal malpractice. Several courts have abandoned the rule in recent years. Washington, however, has decided in the case…
Kelli Dudley is a foreclosure defense lawyer and is a superb advocate for the poor and other underserved populations of Cook County. The defendants in the case also defend foreclosures. In an underlying case, Dudley, on behalf of Tonya Davis, filed a legal malpractice claim against several foreclosure defense lawyers…
This is a post written by Wendy Dessler. Suing a Divorce Attorney for Malpractice So you thought you had hired the perfect divorce lawyer for your case but after the fact you don’t feel they performed as they should have. Do you feel like your divorce attorney did not handle…
This post does not discuss a legal malpractice issue but an issue of appropriate judicial conduct. Professor Alschuler represented former Governor George Ryan in several of his post-conviction appeals. He is an Emeritus Professor of the University of Chicago Law School and a distinguished scholar in the criminal justice field.…
This is an important issue for legal malpractice attorneys. Is a former criminal defendant required to show actual innocence before he can sue for legal malpractice? Most courts have answered this question with “Yes,” but some states are beginning to deviate from the doctrine. The Iowa Supreme Court held that…
This case presents an all too familiar story: a lawyer obtains malpractice insurance but does not realize or understand that the insurance policy contains an exception for any outside business interest. David Marks was the trustee of two trusts that owned a controlling interest in Titan Global Holdings, Inc. Marks…