Illinois Lawyer Referrals and Legal Guidance
Illinois Law On Duty In A Legal Malpractice Case
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In order to sue a lawyer, the lawyer must owe you a duty of some sort: for example, lawyers owe their clients a duty of care. Lawyers must exercise reasonable care when doing anything for a client, and they must use their best efforts on the client’s behalf.
Traditionally, the rule has been that the attorney is only liable to his client, not to third parties (anyone else). The concept here is referred to as "privity,” which means a connection or mutual interest between parties. A lawyer and his client have privity because they have a relationship, while a lawyer has no privity or relationship with any third parties. Historically – and to a large extent this is still true today – clients could sue attorneys for legal malpractice, but anyone who isn’t a client is simply unable to sue.
However, the trend in law has been to abolish "privity" (a relationship) as something that’s necessary to establishing a duty. Instead, a lawyer may owe a duty to third parties who are not his clients. This is the case in many areas of tort law, such as if a lawyer intentionally harms you. Nevertheless, it is not necessarily the case for negligence. The fear is that if lawyers are held liable for mere negligence to people who are not clients, their liability will extend to an unknown, potentially limitless number of people who will claim that the lawyer’s conduct harmed them.
So, what exactly is the state of law in Illinois? Illinois attorneys always owe a duty to their clients, and they may owe a duty to third parties (people who aren’t clients). In order to sue for legal malpractice, the third party has to show that even though he’s not a client, he’s the intended beneficiary of the relationship between the client and the attorney. In other words, the third party stands to benefit from the attorney-client relationship, and the attorney and client intended for him to benefit.
In addition, an attorney may owe a duty to a third party if the attorney does something that affects the third party in a way that’s reasonably foreseeable, and the third party relies on this. An attorney might, for instance, give you bad advice even if you’re not a client, and any reasonable person would have known that you planned to take action in reliance on his advice. If you are then harmed in some way as a result, you may be able to sue the lawyer for legal malpractice.
Does this sound confusing? It can be. If you think you might have an Illinois legal malpractice lawsuit or have questions, you should seek an Illinois legal malpractice attorney. There would not likely be any fee for an attorney to answer your questions. In addition, if you have a question about legal malpractice, you can contact us, or visit our main legal malpractice page.
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