It’s not uncommon for Colorado attorneys to make mistakes when litigating a case. Those errors may result in a different verdict from what you’d expected, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they did anything wrong. It may be a different story if your attorney neglected to file the appropriate motions in a case or missed a deadline. It’s in instances like these that you may have reason to sue them for malpractice.
Attorneys have an obligation to uphold a certain “standard of care”. If they don’t follow through in meeting established deadlines or otherwise meet their contractual obligations to you, then they may be accused of having breached their duty of care. Denver judges will often want to know whether an attorney’s actions or lack thereof caused their client damages and if so, how significant that they were before agreeing to hear a legal malpractice case.
Colorado judges are generally hesitant to hear legal malpractice cases simply on the basis that an attorney made some type of error. They may be much more inclined to have it go to trial if the client can prove that the mistake the lawyer made was quite obvious and that it seriously injured a client. In this case, the “injuries” aren’t necessarily visible ones. They can instead take the form of incarceration versus acquittal, reputational harm, the squandering of money and other unfortunate outcomes.
There are sometimes cases in which an attorney may make an inexcusable error. A judge may not agree to move forward in hearing such a case unless the client can show some kind of proof that they could have won their case had it not been for their lawyer’s mistake. It’s in cases like this that clients must generally prove to a judge how much of a collectible judgment that they would have won had the attorney not dropped the ball and committed an error.
Clients who win legal malpractice cases can generally request compensation including their original legal representation fees and any damages associated with their attorney’s indiscretions.
Proving that an attorney engaged in malpractice isn’t easy. The first step to doing so is having your case evaluated to see if your lawyer failed to uphold the appropriate standard of care. A legal malpractice attorney can help you do this and then advise you whether you should file a lawsuit in your Denver case.