Legal services or guaranteed results: what is more important in the contract?
In case No. 4-KG24-9-K1, there is a dispute over the termination of the legal services agreement.
A resident of Balashikha paid a certain amount of money to the lawyer to help include military personnel in the register of the accumulative mortgage system and recover lost investment income. The lawyer did not achieve results, although he made every effort to do so. The client appealed to the court for a refund, since the result was not achieved.
The courts differed on this issue: the first instance decided to return the money and pay compensation, and the appeal and cassation decided that the lawyer's obligations were fulfilled, since the subject of the contract was services, not the result.
Alisa Shcheglova, Junior Lawyer at Versus.Legal Special Projects Practice, commented the situation for Pravo.ru:
“As a general rule, a legal services agreement requires a lawyer to make every effort rather than achieve results, so the position of the verification authorities is in line with trends in judicial and business practice. The referral of the complaint to the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court seems unexpected. It can be assumed that the Supreme Court will assess the argument of the court of first instance that the defendant, while providing legal services on an ongoing basis and acting in good faith, was obliged to inform the plaintiff that she did not have the right to be included in the register before concluding the disputed agreement.”