P.I. Defense Lawyer Malpractice Claims on the Rise while Malpractice Claims Decline in Other Areas of the Law
Personal injury defense lawyers beware. According to an acticle in the ABA Journal eReport from October 14, 2005, an erosion of the relationship between insurance compaines and the attorneys they retain is to blame for an increase in malpratice claims against P.I. defense attorneys. The article reports on an ABA study of insured lawyers by the Standing Committee on Lawyers' Professional Liability. The study, "Profile of Legal Malpractice Claims," compared claims reported from 2002 to 2003 with those reported from 1995 to 1999 for 25 legal practice areas, and found that while legal malpractice claims against P.I. defense lawyers nearly doubled, the total number of legal malpractice claims for all other areas declined by almost 20 percent.
Even with the decline of claims in all other areas, P.I. plainitffs attorneys still head the list of malpractice claims, followed by real estate lawyers. The increase bumped P.I. defense lawyers to 3rd in the ranking with family law attorneys and estate/trust/probate attorneys rounding out the top five.
The article attributes the increase in legal malpractice claims against P.I. defense attorneys to a breakdown in loyalty between insurance compaines and the lawyers they retain. Attorneys interviewed pointed out that in the past if a mistake was made, insurance compaines were not likely to file a claim against the attorney, but today, loyalty doesn't appear to exsist like it did. When a defendant gets hammered in a case, executives at the insurance companies don't turn a blind eye anymore, they want to know what happened.