Last Updated on 5th March 2025
In what circumstances can I sue a solicitor for negligence?
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When we are asked, ‘Can I sue a solicitor for negligence?’ there are five important questions that we will need to consider.
The five questions
1. Has the solicitor been negligent?
2. Have you suffered financial loss?
3. Have you mitigated your loss?
4. Is the claim within the time limits?
5. Is the claim financially worth pursuing?
We will look at each of these five points in turn.
Has the solicitor been negligent?
This is the first and most obvious question. To sue a solicitor, you have to show that they:
- owed you a duty of care
- acted in breach of that duty.
It will be immediately obvious in most instances whether or not a solicitor owed you a duty of care, but it isn’t always straightforward. For instance, if the solicitor was acting for someone else or the work was done free of charge no then legal duty of care to you may arise.
A solicitor’s breach of their duty of care is what most people mean when they talk about ‘negligence’. The test to determine whether there has been a breach of the duty of care is simple: Has the conduct of the solicitor fallen below the standard to be expected from a reasonably competent solicitor?
This question needs to be carefully considered. Just because you lost your case, for instance, doesn’t mean your solicitor was wrong in their advice. Or just because you didn’t get the outcome you had hoped for, or the amount you were seeking, then it doesn’t necessarily follow that your solicitor was negligent.
If you contact our team for a free consultation then we will be able to offer guidance on whether the solicitor’s actions (or inactions) would amount to negligence.
Have you suffered financial loss?
This is the part that many people forget. The solicitor may have made a mistake, but unless that error has actually caused you material financial loss, you won’t have a claim. And it must be direct financial loss. If there has been an intervening event that has caused the loss, or the loss would have been suffered even if the solicitor had not breached their duty of care, then there is unlikely to be a valid claim.
Have you mitigated your loss?
All claimants have a duty to take reasonable steps to ‘mitigate’ their loss. By this we mean taking reasonable action to minimise the financial impact of the solicitor’s negligence. But what is a reasonable course of action? What if mitigation is going to cost a lot of money, or take too much time? And how do you know whether the action taken is ‘reasonable’?
The costs of a reasonable attempt to mitigate the loss are recoverable from the negligent solicitor, even if the attempt at mitigation ultimately fails. But if your chosen course is considered to be unreasonable, you won’t be able to recover those costs. You therefore need to choose your course of action wisely.
As for what is considered reasonable, the courts have said that if it would be too costly or complicated to bring mitigating action, then you do not have to take that action just to protect the solicitor from the consequences of their own carelessness. But if there is a reasonable course of action that should be taken to reduce the loss, then if you don’t take it your claim could be reduced.
Determining what is reasonable or unreasonable will differ from case to case. Be careful when considering what action you think can be taken either by you (or even the negligent solicitor) to rectify the matter.
Our team can help with mitigation and determining the reasonable steps that need to be taken.
Is the claim within the time limits?
If you are going to issue court proceedings, you need to make sure you do so in time. Failure to comply with the Limitation Act 1980 means your case will be statute barred and you will not be able to recover any compensation.
Put simply, you need to bring a solicitors negligence claim within six years of the negligent act. Usually you can identify fairly easily when the negligence occurred. It might be the date of a report, a key date that has been missed, a failed completion etc. But what if you were unaware there has been an error until after the six years?
Not all mistakes are immediately obvious. Some only come to light much later. In these situations you can rely on s14A of the Limitation Act. This is known as the “date of knowledge” limitation or DOK. This gives you three years from the date you ought reasonably have been aware of the error to bring your claim. While sometimes this may be fairly simple to identify, in others you can easily fall foul of the “reasonable” part. Take for example the situation in a builder’s negligence claim where cracks are observed in a concrete base of a building: Do you use the date that you noticed the cracks, or the date that your expert tells you the builder negligently poured the concrete?
Is the solicitors negligence claim worth pursuing?
You need to consider the overall value of your claim. If your claim is worth less than £10,000, for instance, it will fall into the Small Claims Court jurisdiction, where, regardless of whether you win or lose, you will have to pay your own legal costs. If you choose to instruct a solicitor, the costs of doing so will invariably exceed the value of the claim itself.
It is only if the claim exceeds the Small Claims Court limit that you are entitled to recover some of your legal costs if you are successful. However, even then the full amount of those costs is rarely recoverable and the court limits the sum that can be recovered from the losing party. It is therefore important to look at the potential cost of pursuing your case and establishing that it is proportionate to do so, given the amount of compensation you expect to recover.
How we can help you sue a solicitor for negligence
If you feel you have a valid case to sue a solicitor for negligence, and you would like specialist legal assistance then we will be happy to offer you a free consultation. We deal with claims against solicitors throughout England and Wales and are experienced in handling a broad range of cases, from rights of way errors to claims being struck out, from conveyancing mistakes to cyber fraud.
We will assess your claim free of charge. All we will need from you is some basic information about your case, particularly in relation to the five questions above.
Provided your case has sufficient legal merit, and the value of the claim exceeds the Small Claims Court limit (£10,000 as at February 2025), we will be happy to consider assisting you on a no win, no fee basis.
