Jury awards AdSell owner $1.5 million in legal malpractice case

To hear Mark Shocker tell it, he got bad legal advice in running AdSell, a direct mail company near The Hill. Although attorney Vince Vogler and Columbia, Missouri, accountant Stephen Smith had stakes in the business, written agreements governing profit distributions were never drafted, forcing Shocker in 2009 to settle with Smith in a multimillion-dollar case. The culprit? Vogler, Shocker said. A St. Louis County jury largely agreed Friday when it awarded Shocker $1.5 million in a separate legal…