Expanding Duties of Attorneys to "Non-Clients": Reconceptualizing the Attorney-Client Relationship in Entity Representation and Other Inherently Ambiguous Situations
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1994
ISSN
0038-3104
Language
en-US
Abstract
Under the traditional approach to legal malpractice, an attorney is liable for negligence only to a client, with whom the attorney is in a privity relationship. Thus, an attorney's duties to non-clients are limited primarily to the avoidance of intentional wrongs. Recently, courts have expanded duties owed by attorneys to third-party non-clients; however, considerable confusion and disagreement exists regarding both the parameters and the rationales for such extensions. For example, courts invoking such diverse legal doctrines as third-party beneficiary, negligent representation, gratuitous undertaking, and the "balance of factors" test in negligence have reached different results in cases involving fact patterns ranging from will and trust drafting and trust administration to litigation, opinion letters, and business transactions and disputes.
Recommended Citation
Nancy J. Moore,
Expanding Duties of Attorneys to "Non-Clients": Reconceptualizing the Attorney-Client Relationship in Entity Representation and Other Inherently Ambiguous Situations
,
45
South Carolina Law Review
659
(1994).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/2430
