DYLAN RUGA
Partner & Trial Attorney | Stalwart Law
[email protected] | 310-954-2000 ext. 101
StalwartLaw.com
I’ve sat across the table from a lot of business owners over the years, and the stories tend to sound oddly similar. An acquisition closes, and only later does the buyer realize the liability they took on was never fully disclosed. A property gets purchased for a use that turns out to be illegal, and nobody flagged the zoning issue beforehand. A tax bill shows up that should have been caught eighteen months earlier. Most owners assume they just got unlucky.
Sometimes that’s exactly what happened. But sometimes the problem isn’t luck at all. It’s the attorney who was supposed to be watching for exactly this.
WHAT YOU’RE ACTUALLY OWED
Under California law, your attorney owes you more than just showing up. They’re required to handle your matter with real skill and care, follow your instructions instead of their own agenda, keep you informed along the way, and protect what you tell them. That’s the legal standard. It doesn’t disappear just because a deal was complicated or the outcome was disappointing. If you can trace a bad result back to one of those four obligations, you may have a legitimate claim, not just a bad memory.
This is the one that surprises people most. A conflict of interest almost never shows up as a dramatic betrayal. It’s slower than that. It’s a recommendation that happens to benefit the firm’s other client. It’s a negotiation where certain points somehow never get pushed very hard.
Firms grow, they take on new clients, and sometimes those clients’ interests start running against yours, quietly, without anyone sitting you down to explain it. California requires attorneys to get your informed consent before continuing under a conflict, but in practice, a lot of “informed consent” forms get signed without anyone truly understanding what they were consenting to. If that sounds like something you’ve been through, it’s worth a second look.
SO WHAT CAN YOU ACTUALLY RECOVER?
Two things, generally. First, the direct financial hit. The difference between the outcome you got and the outcome you should have gotten if your attorney had done their job. Second, and this one surprises a lot of clients, California law allows for fee disgorgement, meaning any fees your attorney collected while working against your interests have to be handed back.
The hard part is proving the first piece. You can’t just show that a mistake happened; you have to show what would have happened without it. That often means essentially rebuilding the deal or re-trying the case that should have occurred, which lawyers call the “case within a case.” It’s tedious, technical work, and it’s a big part of why legal malpractice tends to be its own specialty rather than something a general litigator picks up on the side.
IF SOMETHING FEELS OFF, DO THIS FIRST
You don’t need to hire anyone to protect yourself right now. Write down what happened and when, in as much detail as you can remember. Request your complete file from your current or former attorney. You’re entitled to it even if you still owe them money. Don’t sign anything new in the meantime, especially releases or revised fee agreements. Pin down two dates specifically: when the mistake happened, and when you found out about it, since malpractice claims run on strict deadlines. And get a second opinion. It’s not a knock on your attorney’s character; it’s just good business.
WHY WE DO THIS
Legal malpractice is a narrow field, and it’s a special area of practice here at Stalwart Law Group. Our senior attorneys are California State Bar Certified Specialists in legal malpractice, a credential very few attorneys in the state hold. We’ve tried cases on both sides of the courtroom, plaintiff and defense. That combination is part of why Stalwart Law Group has recovered more than $500 million for our clients, including multiple seven and eight-figure results against firms far larger than ours.
If any of this sounds familiar, it’s worth a conversation. Book a free consultation, and let’s talk about what happened.
Dylan Ruga is partner and trial attorney at Stalwart Law.
