Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York March 1, 2011 (Markowitz v. Kurzman Eisenberg Corbin Lever & Goodman, LLP)

To establish a cause of action to recover damages for legal malpractice, a plaintiff must prove that the attorney “failed to exercise the ordinary reasonable skill and knowledge commonly possessed by a member of the legal profession and that the attorney’s breach of this duty proximately caused the plaintiff actual and ascertainable damages” (Hamoudeh v Mandel, 62 AD3d 948, 949 [2009], quoting