Aaron McLeod Authors Alabama Chapter of ABA's Fifty-State Legal Malpractice Survey

Adams & Reese Partner Aaron McLeod authored the Alabama chapter of the American Bar Association’s The Law of Lawyers' Liability: Fifty-State Survey of Legal Malpractice, 2d Ed. Based in the firm's Birmingham office, McLeod focuses his practice on appellate litigation and dispositive-motion briefing and defends tort, commercial, construction-defect, and professional-malpractice cases. He also previously wrote on Alabama legal-malpractice law for the ABA's Professional Liability Litigation Committee.

McLeod’s chapter, “Legal-Malpractice Law in the State of Alabama,” explains how Alabama courts handle malpractice claims against lawyers. It starts with the Alabama Legal Services Liability Act, which governs every legal-malpractice action arising from acts or omissions after April 12, 1988. Under the Act, common-law claims such as suppression, negligence, fraud, and wantonness must be brought as a single legal service liability action. The chapter also identifies where the Act stops: it does not reach claims that don't arise from the receipt of legal services, and nonclients generally cannot sue a lawyer under it. McLeod then turns to the elements of a claim, including the statutory "similarly situated" standard of care, which is tied to a lawyer's locality and any specialty the lawyer claims, and the rule that a reasonable judgment call on an unsettled question of law is not malpractice. A plaintiff must also generally show that the underlying case would have turned out differently but for the lawyer's negligence.

On defense and procedure, the chapter covers the Act’s two-year limitations period, its six-month discovery provision, and its four-year statute of repose, which the Alabama Supreme Court has called an "absolute" bar. McLeod notes that contributory negligence remains a complete defense when a client ignores counsel's advice. He also explains that expert testimony is generally required to prove a breach of the standard of care, with a narrow exception for errors obvious to a layperson. Other topics include the bar on using violations of the professional-conduct rules as evidence and a defendant's statutory right to sever the underlying case for a separate trial.

The chapter also covers the most disputed question under the Act: when a malpractice claim accrues. The Alabama Supreme Court has not definitively resolved that question, although McLeod concludes that the weight of authority favors the rule that the clock starts when the act or omission occurs.

To purchase the book, The Law of Lawyers' Liability: Fifty-State Survey of Legal Malpractice, 2d Ed., visit: The Law of Lawyers' Liability: 50-State Survey, Second Edition.