WI · jury_instructions
Wis JI-Civil 1023.5C
Professional negligence: legal - no claim of lawyer as having claimed expertise
When providing legal services to a client, a lawyer must exercise the degree of care,
skill, and judgment that reasonably prudent lawyers in this state would use under
comparable circumstances. Failing to meet this standard is negligence. The plaintiff has
the burden of proving that the lawyer was negligent.
You must determine whether (lawyer) was negligent in representing (plaintiff) based
on the facts and circumstances that (lawyer) knew or should have discovered when
providing legal services to (plaintiff). A lawyer is negligent if he or she fails to exercise
the skill, knowledge, and care that reasonably prudent lawyers would exercise under
comparable circumstances, whether by failing to investigate or research; or by overlooking
or misapplying relevant facts or legal principles; or by committing acts or omissions that
fall below this standard. A lawyer is not negligent because the outcome of the
representation was not favorable, as long as the lawyer’s actions were consistent with what
reasonably prudent lawyers may have taken under comparable circumstances.
You have heard testimony in this trial from lawyers who appeared as expert witnesses.
Their testimony was necessary because the degree of care, skill, and judgment that a
reasonably prudent lawyer would exercise is not a matter within the common knowledge
of non-lawyers. Instead, this standard is within the specialized knowledge of legal experts
and can be established only through expert testimony. Therefore, you must not speculate
or guess about this standard when deciding the case; you must determine it based on the
expert testimony presented during this trial.
History
Wis JI-Civil 1023.5C (11/2025). Release No. 59. Wisconsin Court System, 11/2025. Prepared by the Wisconsin Civil Jury Instructions Committee of the Wisconsin Judicial Conference with the University of Wisconsin Law School; posted by the Wisconsin State Law Library with the University's permission.
Provenance
- Source
- wilawlibrary.gov
- Retrieved
- 2026-09-24
- Edition
- 2026-09-24
- Content hash
cb804936274eff9ecf2922d983cf7c4ff906cb79a39dc8c3c4007fe3c3e5f205
The link goes to the issuing authority’s own document — the one we read to produce this record. Where a source publishes whole titles rather than sections, your browser may need a moment to jump to the provision.
Unofficial copy of government-published law, reproduced from official sources with full provenance. Not an official publication; verify against official sources before relying on it in a filing. Records in the 'guidance' corpus, and only that corpus, are sub-regulatory (interpretive guidelines, survey procedures) and are not binding law. Validity bounds follow each jurisdiction's declared temporalBasis.