A Manhattan lawyer and his firm have been found liable for legal malpractice because they failed to advise a client about how to correctly make its nearly $1 million deposit on a condominium unit, leading to loss of the money.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lucy Billings ruled that attorney David Ferber and Ferber Chan Essner & Coller had committed malpractice because the “failure to advise plaintiff of the applicable statute and regulation [related to the deposit] departed from the standard of professional care.”