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The Privity Requirement Reconsidered
Hazard, Geoffrey
Hazard, Geoffrey
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Abstract
The traditional version of the law of lawyer liability says that a lawyer is liable only to those with whom the lawyer is in "privity." As a practical matter, this limits the lawyer's liability to clients because it is only with clients that a lawyer is in privity. The notion of privity has lost its place as a limitation on liability in practically all spheres of tort liability except that of lawyer malpractice. Even in the law of legal malpractice, the privity requirement is now shot through with exceptions that render it unintelligible and hence unworkable as a legal concept.