Legal Ethics

Legal Malpractice Payouts Above $2M Increasing, ABA Study Finds

By Debra Cassens Weiss

Sep 5, 2008, 05:33 am CST

Legal malpractice insurers participating in an ABA study report a significant increase in multimillion-dollar payouts.

Claims leading to payouts of more than $2 million have more than doubled, from 44 in a study spanning the years 2004 to 2007, from 19 in a study for the years 2000 to 2003, Legal Pad reports. The most frequent malpractice targets are lawyers representing plaintiffs in personal injury cases and doing real estate work.

While claims against personal injury lawyers are increasing, lawyers on the defense side are seeing fewer such claims.

The study was unveiled yesterday by the ABA’s Standing Committee on Lawyers’ Professional Liability at a national legal malpractice conference in San Francisco.

Committee chair Edith Matthai told Legal Pad that the results should be taken with a grain of salt, for several reasons: The pool of responding insurers has changed, the number of reported claims has increased, and midsize to large law firms are underrepresented.