Update on Malpractice Claims and Insurance: Lawyers Suing Lawyers

An Update to the earlier post on HALT, legal malpractice, and lawyer insurance:  Interesting article Dec. 3 from Law.com here on the practice of legal malpractice law.  It has advice (for all) to get malpractice coverage (in Oregon it is required), and includes info on recent trends in claims stats and who-sues-whom (e.g., rise in insurers suing), lawyer-defendants making matters worse, and the fun of this speciality to the profiled Georgia lawyer, Frank Beltran.  Beltran tells young lawyers to expect 3 to 5 malpractice and bar claims in their life.  He disagrees that insurance would be prohibitively expensive for solo practitioners and very small firms but thinks they think that–and wrongly avoid the issue. He is working with the state bar to try to pass a disclosure requirement (like that discussed in our HALT post above). 

As to a lawyer suing co-counsel for malpractice, see Mike’s post here.  [Alan Childress]