Do you want to sue your lawyer? Lawyers make mistakes, just like everybody else. Not all mistakes cause damages. Still fewer mistakes are nefarious. But when lawyers make mistakes, the damages can be catastrophic — loss of money, land, child custody, freedom. When it’s time to hire a lawyer to sue a lawyer, you need someone with proven willingness to go to the distance.
Experience Makes The Difference
Paul Gordon is one of the most experienced legal malpractice attorneys in the United States. He began working on legal malpractice cases in the early 1990s. His first case involved a politically powerful lawyer who betrayed a client. The lawyer knew that the client’s friend paid the lawyer’s fees and that the client could not pay for a subsequent legal malpractice attorney. After committing malpractice, the lawyer forgave hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid fees in exchange for the friend’s promise not to fund the legal malpractice case.
One of Paul’s first jury trials was against a lawyer who instructed an associate to destroy evidence and thereby hide the malpractice. Instead, the associate preserved the evidence. The client won a judgment that included emotional distress damages.
Unfortunately, in one of Paul’s later cases, the Colorado Court of Appeals held that clients cannot recover damages for emotional distress caused by the mere loss of money.
Legal malpractice involves more than mere ordinary mistakes. You can sue your lawyer for overbilling, breach of contract, and breach of fiduciary duty, among other less common claims. In another one of Paul’s cases, a lawyer used a former client’s confidential information in a lawsuit against the former client on behalf of a new client, thereby breaching fiduciary duties of confidentiality and loyalty to her former client. However, the Court of Appeals held that the client could not recover for emotional distress.
In time, Paul became highly successful at complex legal malpractice litigation. In 2018, for example, he recovered a $1,250,0000 settlement on the fourth day of a jury trial. The right to sue your lawyer is not limited by the subject matter of the earlier representation. Paul has worked on cases involving malpractice in virtually every field of law, including real estate, securities, corporations, intellectual property, estate planning, contracts, eminent domain, personal injury, bankruptcy, civil rights, immigration, tax, family, and criminal law. Some of Paul’s landmark cases are the following:
Allen v. Steele, 252 P.3d 476 (Colo. 2011), reversing, 226 P.3d 1120 (Colo. App. 2009).
Aller v. Law Office of Carole C. Schriefer, P.C., 140 P.3d 23 (Colo. App. 2005).
Do you want to sue your lawyer outside of Colorado? A North Carolina adversary once described Paul as “a hired gun” in legal malpractice cases. If the adversary meant that Paul is a threat to careless lawyers everywhere, the adversary was right. Paul has prosecuted cases (pro hac vice) in Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and West Virginia. In addition, he has worked with lawyers in Great Britain and the Cayman Islands on lawsuits in the United States. He is admitted to practice in all cases before the United States Courts of Appeals for the Seventh and Tenth Circuits, the District Courts for the Districts of Colorado and New Mexico, and all courts in the State of Colorado.
Legal Malpractice Attorneys Must Have A Purpose
Paul knows well the profound consequences of legal malpractice. He obtained an $800,000 judgment against a lawyer who defrauded a client out of the client’s life savings. For years, the lawyer escaped payment of the judgment, which insurance did not cover. Tragically, the client took his life.
Before concluding that the system is against you, contact Paul. He fights to overturn laws favoring careless lawyers. For example, he has long argued that wrongfully convicted criminal defendants should receive emotional distress damages caused by losing freedom, even if clients cannot recover emotional distress caused by losing money. He represented a client who served three years in prison before being exonerated. Other clients received erroneous punishments, such as improper prison sentences for alleged fraud or failing to file tax returns.
Yet, one particular case has inspired Paul the most. Early in his career, he represented a young man wrongfully convicted of assault. The young man was defending a girlfriend from a threatening creditor who entered the young man’s home. Despite having no criminal record, the young man served 90-days in jail. One year after the malpractice case ended, the young man called Paul in a crippling panic attack after a harmless solicitor knocked on the young man’s door. The knock triggered the panic attack. The events cemented Paul’s calling to help victims of legal malpractice.
So, yes, you can sue your lawyer. When he began practicing in 1992, Paul was the youngest lawyer in the State of Colorado. He earned his law degree from the University of Colorado, where he was a member of the law review and received the law school’s highest award for outstanding publication. He received his undergraduate degree in finance and marketing from the University of Denver, which he attended on a full-tuition scholarship.
And Life Outside The Law
Since 1995, Paul has been happily married to a recipient of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. Paul was responsible for arranging her outfits at the world famous Willard International Hotel, while she was at the White House. Together, they have had the good fortune of traveling to such incredible places as Machu Picchu, Le Mont-Saint-Michel, and the Piazza dei Miracoli. When not practicing law, Paul can be found screenwriting, doing the dishes, or searching for a shopping cart with four good wheels.