Dan Pinnington has an article in the current Law Practice Today analyzing the stats on main causes of legal malpractice claims. Most interesting takeaway for me:
Although knowing black-letter law is important, in most areas of practice, a law-related mistake is not even close to your greatest risk of a malpractice claim. A review of the 9,221 LAWPRO claims made between 1999-2004, covering all practice areas, shows that only nine percent of all claims involved a failure to know or apply the law. This figure surprises most lawyers and Continuing Legal Education providers, who expect this type of error to be among the most common that lawyers make. Less than one in ten claims involves a substantive law mistake.
Most claims arise from problems with client communications and relationship issues and time, deadline and calendaring issues (totalling approx 60% of claims in Ontario over the past 5 years by both count and cost). Amazing. These are just the nuts and bolts of basic professionalism. But also interesting is that these are areas that can be managed more efficiently with technology. Which, of course, is why Dan is all over the technology thing, as well.