How To Fire a Lawyer in Texas

If you’re wondering how to fire a lawyer in Texas, you might first want to ask yourself if you should be firing a lawyer. While tensions often run high in attorney-client relationships, firing your attorney is not always necessary. Many disagreements or bumps in the road can be smoothed over with open communication, but the resolution may not be so simple if your attorney’s bad behavior constitutes legal malpractice.

Legal malpractice occurs when your attorney acts or fails to act in the way that a reasonable attorney would, and that act or omission causes you harm. 

If you believe that your attorney messed up your case and caused you harm, contact the lawyers that sue lawyers at Sears Crawford and ask them if you’ve got a malpractice suit. Ross Sears has been suing lawyers in Texas for over 33 years and has built a reputation on getting justice for his clients who their previous attorneys have wronged.

Set up a free consultation with Ross at Sears Crawford please fill out the online case information sheet today. Afterwhich, someone will contact you, if your case meets the online case requirements. You can also reach us by calling (713) 223-3333, but the online information form is typically the quickest and easiest way to get a response, given the number of inquiries we get each day.

What is it called when a lawyer doesn’t do his job?

Before we get into how to fire your lawyer, we should first discuss the difference between a non-responsive attorney and a negligent attorney. There are countless things that your attorney can do to annoy you, and even a number of examples of unethical attorney behavior, that don’t necessarily make your attorney’s behavior negligent, that resulted in harm to your case. In order to prove that an attorney has been negligent or committed malpractice, three things must be proven.

1. There was a duty owed. This can be established by a contract of some kind, proving that they were indeed your attorney. This can be oral or written.
2. That duty was breached. The attorney did not act with your best interests in mind, and their action or inaction was not in keeping with the way a reasonable attorney would have acted under similar circumstances.
3. That breach of duty resulted in harm to the client. They did something that caused your case to have an outcome worse for you than it would have been had they properly handled it.

So, can you sue an attorney for not doing their job? Absolutely! If they have breached their duty to you and caused you harm, then you should absolutely seek counsel on suing your former attorney. But first, you need to get them out of your life, at least on a working level.

Examples of legal malpractice

While there are many ways for a lawyer to commit legal malpractice, some of the most common types of legal malpractice include:

• Failure to know or apply the law occurs when an attorney attempts to take on a case outside of the scope of their expertise.
• Failure to obtain client consent. This type of malpractice usually stems from an attorney accepting a settlement or other resolution that their client is not happy with or did not authorize.
• Failure to calendar. Another way to think of failing to calendar is missing important deadlines.
• Inadequate discovery or inadequate investigation occurs when an attorney doesn’t identify sufficient information about your case during the discovery process.
• Breaches of fiduciary duty can include placing the lawyer’s interests ahead of the client’s best interests, commonly breaking confidentiality or failing to disclose conflicts of interest.
• Fraud. This is a general term for any sort of deception by the attorney.
• Overbilling or unconscionable fees happen more often than you would think and can occur by excessive hourly billing, double billing for tasks, charging an excessive or unreasonable contingency fee, or abuse of client funds.

If any of the above types of legal malpractice seem familiar, you should contact the best legal malpractice attorney you can possibly find to take a look at your case.

Continue reading: How to prove attorney overbilling

Can I fire my attorney if I signed a contract?

Can I fire my attorney if I signed a contract? First things first, you can always fire your lawyer if you are unhappy with their services. If your attorney is an “hourly attorney” (you are paying them by the hour), then you can terminate them at any time for any reason and replace them with another attorney. But how to fire a lawyer and how to fire a lawyer and get your money back are not always this simple, especially if your attorney is not on an hourly pay structure.

Just because you can fire your lawyer doesn’t mean that you always should. Ever wonder what happens if you fire your lawyer without another one to take their place? Even if the court lets you hire a new attorney, they’ll be left cleaning up someone else’s mess, or they may refuse to get involved because they don’t have a reasonable amount of time left to prepare for trial, or there are critical deadlines that have already passed, which can disadvantage your case. You should only fire your lawyer if you’re sure that you have time to replace them with another attorney, and terminating them will not harm your case.

Firing an attorney on a contingency fee

If your attorney is working under a “contingency fee” agreement (they get paid a percentage of your recovery) then you must be careful how and why you terminate them. You can still fire the attorney at any time for any reason, but if they are not terminated for “cause” then you may still owe them part, or the entirety of their contingency fee, and when you hire your new attorney, you may now owe 2 attorneys. A “for cause” termination is one in which you have good reason to terminate your attorney, like:

• Neglecting your case
• Not communicating with you
• Doing things that delay or harm your case
• Not looking out for your best interests

Even if you fire an attorney “for cause” they can still seek to be reimbursed for reasonable time and expense incurred in handling the case under an equitable principle known as quantum meruit. Also, keep in mind that often, when you terminate a contingency fee attorney early in the case or after they have done any reasonable work on your case, then they will typically send you a letter or notify the court and opposing counsel that they are maintaining an interest in your case. You do not want to pay two attorneys a 30% to 40% (or more) fee, especially if you are only recovering 20% of your case value. Address these things with your old and new attorneys to ensure everyone is on the same page and that your interests are protected.

If you have an attorney needing firing, you don’t want to wait too long. In the event that you know that your attorney is operating in bad faith or just making mistakes that they shouldn’t, you should consult another lawyer before it is too late.

Is it too late to fire my attorney?

When is it too late to fire your attorney? If you are stuck with a bad attorney who has already messed up your case, it might be too late.

If your lawyer committed malpractice and lost your case because of it, the only way to seek justice is to sue your lawyer before the statute of limitations has expired. In Texas, the legal malpractice statute of limitations is most often two years from the date of discovery of legal malpractice, not two years from when you decide to sue them.

Therefore, the moment that you notice something is wrong, you should pick up the phone and call a legal malpractice expert, like Ross Sears II at Sears Crawford, who has been helping legal malpractice clients for over 30 years.

How to fire an attorney in Texas

Now that you know a few good reasons for firing your attorney and are aware of why you need to think hard about the decision, how do you fire your lawyer? Firing a lawyer in Texas is generally a four-step process.

1. Sleep on it. You need to make sure that you’re making the right decision and that terminating your lawyer, at this stage in your case, will not leave you in a worse position than you are currently in.
2. Have a new lawyer ready to go. You should have a succession plan in place. Talk to other attorneys to see if they will agree to take the case if you were to fire your current attorney.
3. Notify your attorney in writing. Let your attorney know that you no longer want to use their services. If you are firing them “for cause,” then put in writing the reasons you are terminating them and let them know that you consider it to be “for good cause.” Let them know who your new attorney will be, and ask them to transfer the entirety of your case file to your new attorney.
4. Sue them for legal malpractice. 

If your new attorney cannot obtain a full recovery for you in your case because of something your terminated attorney did to harm the case, then you may have a malpractice case. If you or your new attorney believe that your former attorney did something to harm your case and prevent you from obtaining the outcome you should have obtained, then call Ross Sears II at Sears Crawford to discuss your possible legal rights against your former attorney.

Can I fire my attorney by email?

You can absolutely fire your attorney by email. All you need is a written record of your communication that includes the reason for termination and the date on which you are terminating them.

Make sure to keep the email professional, and make sure to confirm that it has been received. The email should contain, at minimum, the following information:

• Your name and contact information
• The attorney’s name and contact information
• A clear statement of your intention to terminate the attorney-client relationship
• The reasons for termination
• The effective date of termination
• Instructions regarding the transfer of your case file

How do you write a letter to terminate a lawyer?

Writing a letter of termination is an important step in the process of firing your lawyer, but it should not be the final one. You should have another attorney ready to take your case if you are in the middle of the case or an attorney ready to sue them if the case is over.  That new attorney should be able to help you follow the above steps and draft an appropriate termination letter.

Fired your lawyer? Ready to sue? Call Ross at Sears Crawford today.

Now that you know how to fire an attorney in Texas, it’s time to decide if you need to sue them for malpractice. Ross Sears, co-founding attorney of Sears Crawford, is Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law, the legal specialization encompassing Legal Malpractice, and has been suing bad lawyers for over 30 years.

If your lawyer committed errors that harmed or reduced the value of your case, the lawyers at Sears Crawford can help you build a strong case against them.

Firing your lawyer is often only step one in the process. Take the next step by giving us a call today at (713) 223-3333 or contacting us online for a free consultation.

More Helpful Articles by Sears Crawford: 

• What is Considered Malpractice for an Attorney?
• What is Breach of Contract in Legal Malpractice?
• Do Lawyers Have To Carry Malpractice Insurance?
• What Is the Standard Contingency Fee for an Attorney?
• How To Fight Excessive Attorney Fees