Doctors and hospitals were getting sued for malpractice, but not lawyers. The tide has now changed.
Malpractice suits against lawyers in South Dakota are now commonplace.
My recollection is that this trend started to accelerate about 15 years ago. There is nothing wrong with holding lawyers accountable for their conduct. After all, it is our profession which must defend the basic principle that everyone is accountable, through due process of law, for their own conduct. One side effect of legal malpractice suits has been the need for expert witnesses to evaluate and testify about the standard of care involved in a particular legal malpractice case. This has affected me because I have been retained in a number of legal malpractice cases to testify as an expert witness.