Bar Exam prep question - see description

Question

An attorney is a general practitioner with extensive experi-ence in personal injury litigation. The attorney has also han-dled legal malpractice cases, but does not hold herself out to be experienced in such cases. A man contacted the attorney by telephone and asked her to represent him in a legal mal-practice case that he wanted to file against the lawyer who had handled his divorce. The attorney refused even to meet with the man, saying that she was troubled by how high mal-practice insurance premiums were getting and was not going to take any new legal malpractice cases. She did not offer to refer the man to other lawyers who took legal malpractice cases. The man tried to contact several other lawyers, each of whom indicated that he or she would be happy to accept the repre-sentation but was too busy to take on any new matters. Six months later the statute of limitations expired without the man filing his lawsuit. If the man can establish that a legal malpractice action against the divorce lawyer would have succeeded, is the attorney subject to civil liability for refusing to accept the rep-resentation?

Answer 1

No. A lawyer generally has no duty to accept representation of a prospective client, absent a special relationship or circumstances creating reliance. Here, the attorney clearly declined representation and never agreed to act on the man’s behalf. She also had no obligation to refer him to another attorney. Therefore, she is not subject to civil liability simply for refusing the case, even though the statute of limitations later expired.