You must show the following in order to win a legal malpractice case:
- Your attorney owed you a duty to provide competent representation
- Your attorney breached that duty by acting negligently, by making a mistake that a reasonable attorney would not have made, or by not following your agreement.
- The attorney’s breach caused you harm or injury by proving that the outcome of your case would likely have been different had your attorney acted properly.
- You suffered a financial loss as a result of your attorney’s behavior.
You essentially have to show that if your attorney had been competent and behaved like a reasonable lawyer, you would have prevailed in the underlying case. For this reason, legal malpractice lawsuits can be thought of as a case within a case.
