Missouri lawyers seem to be getting better at fending off legal malpractice claims.  The state Department of Insurance says successful malpractice claims against lawyers last year were 20 percent below the 10-year average for such claims. 

At issue are claims that clients bring against lawyers, generally their own lawyers. The department said 231 claims were closed, of which 53 resulted in a payment from the lawyer’s insurance company. The average successful claim brought the client $84,453 last year, which is 13 percent below the average for the previous decade.

 The most common claim, accounting for about a quarter of the total, accused an attorney of missing a filing deadline in a client’s case.  The second most common complaint was “procrastination, or lack of follow up,” followed by strategy errors and bad interpretation of the law.

The biggest number of cases, 38 percent, were brought by plaintiffs against lawyers who represented them in bodily injury and property damage cases.