 Legal Malpractice
 The lawyers of Jones, Jensen & Harris have handled, successfully, more legal malpractice claims for plaintiffs than any other lawyer or law firm in Georgia. We have tried dozens of cases, taken our fair share to the Georgia Supreme Court, and settled more than a few cases confidentially without ever filing suit.
Legal malpractice occurs when a lawyer deviates from the required standard of care, skill and diligence during the representation of a client. Another way of saying the same thing is that the lawyer was negligent. To be a valid claim of legal malpractice, the lawyer’s negligence must have caused some financial loss to the client.
As a very simple example, if the client hires the lawyer to handle a personal injury claim, and the lawyer, for no valid reason, fails to file suit before the statute of limitations expires, then the lawyer’s negligence caused the client to lose whatever the value was of the underlying personal injury case. In the legal malpractice claim, we must then prove what ought to have been recovered in the underlying case, and those damages may then be recovered from the negligent lawyer.
In 2007, we took two somewhat unusual cases to trial, both of which involved malpractice that occurred while the attorneys were defending clients against whom claims had been made by other parties. In each case, the defendant lawyers’ acts or omissions resulted in judgments against their respective clients, and in each case, we argued that had it not been for the attorneys’ negligence, the judgments (both were in excess of $1 million) against the clients would not have happened. One of those trials ended with a settlement, and the other resulted in a very substantial verdict for the injured client.
Legal malpractice can occur in any number of situations, not just in connection with litigation. For example, if a lawyer fails to properly advise the client of the legal effect of a provision in a contract that a non-lawyer would not be expected to understand, and such failure causes the client to suffer a financial loss, then the client may have a legal malpractice claim.
If you believe that your lawyer may have been negligent in representing you, contact the lawyers of Jones, Jensen & Harris. Our lawyers have extensive experience representing victims of legal malpractice throughout Georgia and the Southeastern United States.
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