attorney malpractice in CA, procedures for filing a claim and getting money back for attorney's errors

leagl malpractice: My husband has been his grandmothers conservator for years. He hired an attorney to represent him and file all the necessary paperwork with the courts to make sure he was doing everything legally. After about eight years, we discovered that the attorney had not been doing his job, had never filed an accounting with the court(even though he has been given all the paperwork from my husband) and the court was starting to ask questions. We had to hire a new attorney to clean up the mess and this ended up costing approx $17,000 from a small estate. When in actuallity, the yearly fee should have been about $2000 - $3000. In addition to the extra expense, my husband had to spend countless hours on this mess as well.

Does he have a possible case against the old attorney to try an recoupe some of money and time that was lost as a result of the old attorney's errors? - Is this your question? Add additional information