Do I have grounds for a professional negligence claim?

Sometimes professional services fall short of the standard they should meet.

If you’ve received poor advice or service from a solicitor, accountant, wealth planner or surveyor, what you can do about it?

If the issue is poor service – such as delays in responding to you or issues with fees – you can use the professional’s complaints procedure. If the problem is not resolved to your satisfaction, you may be able to ask the relevant ombudsman or regulator to review your complaint.

But if you believe the advice was negligent or the professional made a mistake, you may have grounds to bring a professional negligence claim against them.

Starting a professional negligence claim

When you instruct a professional, they owe you, as their client, a contractual duty of care.

Professional negligence is when a professional fails to perform their responsibilities to the required standard and breaches their duty of care. To bring a successful claim, you must show that the service fell below the required standard and that their breach of duty of care caused your losses.

If you believe you have received negligent advice, we recommend the following initial steps to establish whether you have grounds to bring a professional negligence claim:

• Keep any relevant documents. You may need to request a copy of your file from the professional – they are obliged to provide it, although they may have a right to withhold the file if you owe them outstanding fees. Start by reviewing their engagement letter, which serves as their contract with you, to understand the scope of their duty of care
• Gather evidence of any financial losses caused by the alleged negligence. Sometimes losses take time to emerge, but collecting as much information as possible is key. Even if the professional has made a mistake, you may not have a viable claim unless you have suffered a loss – which generally means a financial loss – as a result
• You have a duty to mitigate your losses, which means doing what you can to limit the losses you suffer as a result of the professional’s breach of duty of care. If you don’t, your ability to recover losses may be limited. You may need further legal advice on how best to do this
• Consider the limitation period for your claim. For a contractual claim, you usually have six years from the date the claim arose to issue court proceedings. If you miss this deadline, the professional may have a complete defence. In some cases – for example, if you were not initially aware of the breach of duty of care – the deadline may be extended. It’s often hard to pinpoint the exact limitation date, so it’s important to investigate as soon as you become aware of an issue and seek early legal advice.

Our expert dispute resolution team can discuss whether you have a potential claim.