There are, actually, two cases which must be proven in legal malpractice suits. After it is proven that the prior lawyer was negligent, the plaintiff must essentially try "the case-within-the-case."

To recover damages in a legal malpractice suit, the plaintiff must establish that the underlying case was meritorious and would have resulted in damages in the plaintiff's favor. A previous attorney may have accepted your case and inflated your expectations without investigating the case thoroughly. In such situations, you may contend that the previous attorney's negligence prevented you from winning the case. Your next attorney will, therefore, make a thorough investigation of the underlying case before accepting your legal malpractice case.

Your second lawyer who files a legal malpractice case without looking at alternative options in the underlying case, may, himself, be committing malpractice.

The attorney must make sure that there are no other remedies available to you. If your prior lawyer has not done so, the subsequent lawyer must not make the same error. If the subsequent lawyer files a malpractice case instead of pursuing the alternate remedy, he is contributing to the loss of the client's rights.

The statute of limitations can be extended by any one of numerous judicially-created mechanisms. When you present a malpractice case that is based upon the failure of the previous attorney to act before the statute of limitations expired, the second attorney should make sure that it has, in fact, expired.

You should be aware of these useful tips when thinking about filing a legal malpractice suit.

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