I won't repeat what the other lawyers who have answered on her have said but let me give a couple of additional considerations. First, if you are this long into the case your attorney is going to need to get the court and get permission to withdraw unless you give him authority to dismiss without prejudice. It might be better for you if your attorney files a motion to withdraw as the court will often give you time to get another attorney. If you still can't find an attorney, you can always voluntarily dismiss later. You don't want to use a voluntary dismissal unless you absolutely have to for a number of reasons. While normally you can refile a case that was voluntarily dismissed with one year, there are exceptions and you better be sure that none of these exceptions apply. Assuming that the case had not been dismissed before, you might be prohibited from refiling in your attorney voluntarily dismissed one of the defendants in the case or if a defendant in your case had previously been dismissed on a motion brought by the defendant. This is known as a Hudson problem in Illinois. Also, it is important to ask your attorney, or better yet, look at the court file yourself to find out if the court has set deadlines for completion of discovery that have now passed. Normally, the court enters dates upon which certain discovery must be completed, such as the deposing of parties and experts. If, for example, the court gave your attorney until August 1 to disclose expert opinions and he did not disclose experts within that time, you may not be able to name a new expert even if you refile. Making this more confusing is that Courts are not uniform in the way they handle discovery on refiled cases. You may or may not be able to name a new expert if the deadline passed in the original case. If the trial court has entered discovery sanctions, such as barring your attorney from taking further depositions, that sanction will stand in the refiled case as well. Many times at the outset of a case, an expert will give broad opinions of negligence but as more information becomes available the expert will back down. If this is the case, you should think long and hard about continuing with the case. It may be that there just is not sufficient evidence of negligence. You are right that many new attorneys will not be anxious to get involved in a case that has been pending for a long time. One of the reasons will be the attorney lien that is on the file. Since your attorney does not believe in the file, he should be willing to commit in writing that he reduce his lien to the amount of costs and not seek attorney fees. He is the one that decided to keep the case for two years making it unlikely for you to find another lawyer, he should be happy to get his expenses back. If he insists on getting his fees back, then ask him for an itemization of the hours spent on your case and perhaps you can negotiate it down from there.
