Title: When the Lawyer Screws Up: A Portrait of Legal Malpractice Claims and Their Resolution
Abstract: All professionals make mistakes and sometimes those mistakes harm the clients or patients. What happens when this occurs and the professional involved is a lawyer? Surprisingly, there is virtually no empirical research on legal malpractice. In contrast, there is an extensive empirical literature on medical malpractice and the legal handling of legal malpractice claims. This literature examines the frequency of medical malpractice claims, how they are handled, how they are resolved, and their impact on access to and cost of medical care. The absence of a similar literature concerning legal malpractice is at least somewhat surprising given that there are roughly equal numbers of private practice lawyers and patient care physicians in the United States.