Since the first time the American Bar Association began conducting surveys of legal malpractice claims in 1985, insurers have reported a higher percentage of claims involving real estate than any other area of law.
The top of the “Profile of Legal Malpractice Claims: 2008-2011” are personal injury-plaintiff and family law. In the five previous surveys personal injury-plaintiff matters had been number one.
Eleven member insurers of the National Association of Bar-Related Insurance Companies from the U.S. and nine from Canada contributed data to the study, along with eight commercial insurance companies. Insurers provided data on 53,000 claims for the 2011 study, the most ever.
The study presents data on number of claims by area of law, number of lawyers in the firm, type of activity, disposition of claim, type of alleged error, indemnity dollars paid to claimant and other categories.
The study found the type of activity most likely to generate claims was “preparation, filing, and transmittal documents,” retaining the number one position.
The study’s authors cautioned that because the survey relies on self-reporting only from those participating legal malpractice insurers, it is not a comprehensive review of all malpractice claims against all lawyers and should not be used by underwriters to determine high- and low-risk practices.
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