Legal Question in Civil Litigation in California

You should be able to handle the case management conference. If you can, file and serve by mail a case management statement. http://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/cm110.pdf ASAP. You should be able to fill it out. Then, if you can't find an attorney by the time of the conference, go to court and tell the judge that your lawyer's not going to be representing you and ask for a couple of months to find another lawyer before the court sets the trial date. You can -- and should -- also put that in the case management statement, but don't go into details why your lawyer has quit on you. Then, look for a lawyer. The court doesn't really involve itself in determining factual issues in the case. It just needs to know if it should set a trial date, whether mediation or some other kind of alternative dispute resolution would help, and if there is anything else the court should know. But definitely don't wait to get another attorney because there's real property involved. You don't want to let that fall through the cracks. As far as suing the lawyer, you can't make someone do work on a case when his or her heart isn't in it, the facts don't support it, or something else is going on. Just move on -- quickly!