Illinois Lawyer Referrals and Legal Guidance
Illinois Legal Malpractice Overview
Findgreatlawyers.com is a free service, run by Illinois lawyers, to find an attorney or obtain guidance for any Illinois legal matter, including Illinois legal malpractice cases. If you would like a referral or have general questions about legal malpractice in Illinois please call us at (312) 346-5320 or (800) 517-1614 or fill out our contact us form and we will contact you. All inquiries are kept in strict confidence. We are based out of Chicago, but help people find legal malpractice attorneys throughout Illinois. For a general overview of legal malpractice please read on.
Legal malpractice is a lawyer’s failure to adequately represent a client. To establish a legal malpractice claim in Illinois, the follow six elements must be present:
- An attorney-client relationship must exist.
- The attorney must establish a duty to the client. This happens automatically when the attorney agrees to represent the client.
- The attorney must fail to act according to the "standard of care" that the duty requires.
- This failure to act in a certain way results in damages to the client.
- The damages to the client result in irreparable harm.
- The client’s original case was viable; it stood a reasonable chance of winning in court.
Attorneys owe a fiduciary duty to clients. They are bound by a very high standard of honesty and full disclosure, and they must exercise due care. Attorneys can’t obtain any personal benefit at the expense of clients, and they are required to use their best efforts on the client’s behalf.
This, of course, means that a lawyer must appropriately and ethically bill clients; overcharging or padding a bill, for instance, would be legal malpractice. Lawyers also have to provide good, accurate advice about the law and legal consequences. If a lawyer’s mistake causes you harm, he may be liable to you for damages. One common problem is that an attorney has to comply with a filing deadline for a document or a statute of limitations for your claim, but he is careless and misses the deadline. Once this happens, there is nothing that can be done, and you have suffered a loss because you missed your chance to timely submit something important. The lawyer, therefore, may be liable to you for damages.
Some common areas of legal malpractice include:
- Ethical matters.
- Failure to properly advise the client.
- Conflict of interest.
- Breach of fiduciary duty to the client.
- Missed statute of limitations or filing deadline.
- Emotional injuries caused by the lawyer’s negligence.
- Fraud.
Under the attorney judgment rule, an attorney is not liable just because he made, in retrospect, an error in judgment as long as he made the judgment in good faith. This rule protects attorneys who give advice and act honestly, to the best of their knowledge, and in the best interests of clients. An extreme error in judgment, on the other hand, may give rise to liability for legal malpractice.
Our explanation of Illinois legal malpractice is obviously very general and it is important to remember that every potential Illinois legal malpractice case is different. If you have any additional questions or would like us to help you find an Illinois legal malpractice lawyer please do not hesitate to contact us. All inquiries are free and confidential.
Findgreatlawyers.com is a free service, run by Illinois lawyers, to help people with any Illinois legal matter. Whether you are looking for a Rockford legal malpractice attorney or an attorney negligence law firm in Chicago, Peoria, Belleville or anywhere else in Illinois we can likely point you in the right direction. See for yourself why access to our site is like having an attorney in the family.