California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from Platt v. Superior Court (Contreras), 214 Cal.App.3d 779, 263 Cal.Rptr. 32 (Cal. App. 1989):
A client suing for legal malpractice must typically prove not only negligence, but causation: Non-negligent management of the underlying case would have resulted in a favorable outcome. (Campbell v. Magana (1960) 184 Cal.App.2d 751, 754, 8 Cal.Rptr. 32.) In this context, where issues of breach of the lawyer's duty and probable success in the underlying case are involved, the lawyer's impressions, conclusions, opinions, legal research and theories which would have been "reasonably necessary to the client's representation" had he simply been discharged, will now be "relevant to the subject matter" ( 2017) 18 of the malpractice case and, therefore, within the scope of permissible discovery, now that the lawyer has been sued.
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