In the year 2002, over 35,000 legal malpractice plaintiffs filed claims against lawyers who had legal malpractice insurance. Of those plaintiffs, 12,000 people successfully recovered money against a lawyer. These claims represent only the tip of the iceberg as they only represent negligence claims against insured lawyers.

Of the 12,000 successful claims, 1,900 of the legal malpractice plaintiffs were paid over $100,000 damages.

Generally, the most common types of mistakes are: 1) failure to know the substantive law; 2) not knowing/observing a deadline; 3) failure to inform client or get a client's consent; 4) failure to calendar events; and 5) inadequate discovery/investigation.

Most Legal Malpractice falls in the following classes of errors:
 

  
1. Administrative Errors
Failure to Calendar, Failure to File/No Deadline, Clerical error, procrastination.
 
2. Substantive Errors
  Failure to know Deadline, Inadequate Investigation, Failure to Know the Law, Conflict of Interest.
 		  
  3. Client Relations  
  Failure to Follow Client Instructions, Failure to Obtain Client's Consent, Improper Withdrawal.
 		  
  4. Intentional Wrongdoing  
  Libel, Malicious Prosecution, Civil Rights, Fraud, fraud, theft.
 		  
In today’s high-tech environment, it has been reported that over 92% of all documents and written communications are produced on computers.  This fact alone should be sufficient enough to compel attorneys to more closely scrutinize electronic evidence for discovery.  And yet, a large percentage of litigation attorneys are either unfamiliar with or slow to adopt the powerful advantages of leveraging digital evidence discovery into their cases.

When considering the adoption of Digital Evidence Discovery for a particular case, we suggest that you bear in mind that a well thought out strategy in its implementation is required in order to prevail:

1. Seek a specialist who can provide insight into the Litigation Cycle in Digital Evidence Discovery.  This should include anticipated, step-by-step procedures to include pre-filing investigation and client preparation, interrogatory suggestions, effective Notice of Deposition [Rule (30)(b)(6)], and affidavit assistance.
 
2. Retain the services of specialists in the field of computer forensics in which the following support is offered:
 
  • Evidence Processing-the restoration, search, filtering and consolidation of data, e-mails, and files from virtually any type of media.
 
  • Investigations-where skilled investigators that know where to look for evidence and will manage it through the proper chain-of-custody techniques to be admissible to the court.
 
  • Expert Witness Testimony-trial support by expert witnesses who can professionally support the evidence findings in easy-to-understand language

cybercontrols, llc is a full service firm dedicated to the objective of supporting lawyers and their firms with professional expertise in the pursuit of gathering the elusive electronic evidence that make or break a case.  In combination with our computer forensic specialists and our legal counsel, cybercontrols is prepared to assist in all aspects of electronic evidence discovery.

Don’t let your unfamiliarity with this most important evidentiary practice put you at risk of a potential claim against you or your firm in not providing your clients every advantage in the discovery/investigation stage.

Our management team is available to discuss how cybercontrols may be of assistance to you.  Please visit our website: http://www.cybercontrols.net or you can call us at 800-862-7671.