Legal Malpractice

What is Legal Malpractice?

Legal malpractice occurs when your attorney makes a mistake in the handling of your case that a reasonably competent attorney would not have made—and the mistake results in damage to you. Simply stated, your attorney did not provide you with the representation that a reasonably prudent attorney would have provided in your case.

As a legal malpractice lawyer serving Middle Tennessee, East Tennessee, and portions of West Tennessee, attorney David Day can help you address the four initial questions that must be considered before determining whether you have a case:

Did legal malpractice occur?
If so, did that legal malpractice result in damages to you?
If so, what is the amount of your damages?
Could you have collected your damages had malpractice not occurred?

Failure to timely file a claim can be one of many ways that lawyers commit legal malpractice. All states, including Tennessee, have statutes of limitations that apply to personal injury cases, breach of contract cases, defective lien cases, breach of fiduciary duty cases, wrongful death cases, and many other different types of lawsuits. Statutes of limitations are time periods within which you must have your lawsuit filed.

If your lawsuit is not timely filed, it will likely be dismissed. That means, if you hired a lawyer before the applicable statute of limitations expired to represent you in your case and your lawyer failed to timely file your case, legal malpractice has probably occurred. There are many, many ways that attorneys commit legal malpractice. This is just one example.

If your lawyer committed malpractice in his or her handling of your case, the next question to address is did that malpractice cause you damages?

Continuing with the example we have set forth above, let us assume that the reason you hired your lawyer was because you were involved in an automobile accident and that your lawyer failed to get a lawsuit filed for you on time. What damages have you incurred? Your damages include, but are not necessarily limited to, the amount of money or other relief that you would have obtained had your lawyer NOT committed malpractice and prosecuted the case to conclusion.

Case Within a Case

From the above example, you can see that most legal malpractice cases are actually a “case within a case.” This means, as a legal malpractice lawyer serving Middle Tennessee, East Tennessee and portions of West Tennessee, we must first see if your lawyer malpracticed, and then we must evaluate what you would have recovered in the “underlying case” had the lawyer not malpracticed. That evaluation can be quite complicated, but includes issues such as who was at fault for the accident, what kind of injuries you or your loved ones sustained, and whether there existed one or more insurance policies that you would have been able to collect from had your lawyer not botched up the case. This is just a very simple example of the general way we evaluate legal malpractice cases. The violation of a time limitation is just one way malpractice can occur.

Contact Our Legal Malpractice Lawyer in Middle Tennessee and East Tennessee

For over 35 years, attorney David Day has been providing legal representation for victims of legal malpractice in East Tennessee, Middle Tennessee and West Tennessee. We pride ourselves on prioritizing the needs of each and every client and will work with you personally to develop a strong plan to achieve justice on your behalf. While we do everything possible to resolve legal malpractice claims without the additional time and expense of court, we are prepared to go to court if a favorable settlement cannot otherwise be reached.

Call (931) 528-7002 to speak with our experienced legal malpractice lawyer in Tennessee today!

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(931) 528-7002

I / We understand that by submitting this information that there is no attorney client relationship between you and Tennessee Legal Malpractice, LLC and that there never will be an attorney client relationship unless and until a written attorney client agreement is signed by all. I / We also understand that if a response is not received by us from Tennessee Legal Malpractice, LLC within 7 days of submitting this form, that we are to assume that Tennessee Legal Malpractice, LLC is not willing to take this case, and that we should seek out other counsel as soon as possible, as Tennessee has a very short statute of limitations. (Required)