To Err is Human, Denying It May Not Be So Divine

I have often said that people often come to me not because they were harmed, but because of the way they were treated after they harmed. For example, a medical malpractice client may come because they can’t get a straight answer from the doctor. Or a person injured in an accident may come because they are treated poorly by the insurance adjuster.

The same holds true for legal malpractice cases. If a lawyer is upfront about his errors, then clients are often forgiving of errors. This week’s issue of the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly has advice on what to do when one commits legal malpractice, and the article confirms my advice. The article writes:

Notify your client — While failing to report a potential claim to your carrier may result in a denial of coverage, failing to notify your client may subject you to bar discipline. Further, legal-malpractice statistics consistently confirm that former clients are less inclined to sue their lawyers over bad news if the lawyers come right out and share that bad news.

I guess it’s good for us that many lawyers refuse to do the right thing.