The traditional legal malpractice action involves a claim by a client against its attorney resulting from the attorney’s breach of duty owed to the client, and the client’s resulting damages. But recent trends show that more and more clients are suing their attorneys not because the attorneys actually committed malpractice, but because a particular deal or litigation did not turn out as well as the clients thought it would—and thus, they turn to their attorneys as their insurers or guarantors.

What makes these trends even more troubling is an increase in the number of similarly motivated claims brought against attorneys by nonclients. These claims may include beneficiaries of an estate represented by a lawyer, shareholders of corporations where the lawyer represents only the entity, litigation-funding companies unhappy with the result of a matter, and even adversaries who claim they relied on something another party’s attorney said. Courts have generally recognized that such claims should be the narrow exception to the rule requiring an attorney-client relationship as the threshold element to maintaining a legal malpractice claim, and that such claims should go to trial only where they involve a specific invitation by the attorney for the nonclient to rely on the attorney’s services or representations.

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