• Chances of Success: Assess your chances of success carefully. Remember, the legal system is primarily set up only to compensate you with money for your losses or injury. Weigh all the financial details. Consider getting a second legal opinion, both on your chances of winning and on the amount you're likely to win. Although cases are never certain, lawyering is a business, and lawyers should be able to estimate this for you: it's what they do before they decide whether to take a case.
  
  
• Difficulty Finding a Lawyer: Members of the legal profession traditionally have been unwilling to sue their fellow lawyer, and those willing to do so are picky about the cases they take because malpractice cases are hard to win. It may take time to round-up prospects. For help in locating legal malpractice lawyers across the country, you can write, fax or email halt@halt.org a request for a legal malpractice attorney referral from HALT.

Legal Malpractice Insurance

In every state except Oregon, lawyers are not required to carry legal malpractice insurance. A few states, such as South Dakota, require lawyers to disclose their uninsured status on letterhead. In Virginia, the public may check a lawyer's insured status through the state bar's website. But in most states, it is impossible to find out whether an attorney is insured without directly asking the attorney for proof of his insurance.

Nationally, HALT is urging the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Client Protection to include a provision within the ABA Model Rules that would require lawyers who do not carry legal malpractice insurance to inform their clients of that fact.