Checking Attorney Credentials
If you find yourself in need of legal counsel for any reason whatsoever, hiring an attorney you can trust should be one of your first priorities. However, it is generally not as easy as simply opening up the phone book to the “lawyers” section and calling the first name you see. Choosing an attorney who will focus on your case and make your experience easier and less stressful requires that you do a little research beforehand.
One of the key elements to this type of research is determining the credentials of the attorney you choose to hire. Many lawyers will claim to have certain credentials, but it is up to you to make sure that these claims match up with reality. To make this easier, we have decided to create three categories of credentials that you should inquire about when consulting any type of lawyer for any type of case. These three categories are education, experience, and success rate.
First, education. You may not think that education plays as big of a role as experience or success rate, but education highly contributes to an attorney’s ability to come up with innovative and flexible solutions to problems that you may encounter throughout your case. You should ask any attorney you meet with about his or her education in the following way.
To begin with, ask him or her where he or she went to law school and how well he or she fared in class compared to his or her classmates. Although a person’s work ethic and habits can change over time, knowing how well an attorney did in law school can give you an idea of how much time, dedication, and effort he or she will put into your specific case. Next, you should ask what type of law the attorney ended up specializing in during his or her time in law school. Though many attorneys expand to different fields over the year, the type of law they specialized in throughout law school will often be their strongest point.
Once you have an idea of an attorney’s education, you should begin questioning him or her about his or her experience. For how long has this person been practicing? How many cases has he or she taken on in, say, the past year or two? What legal field have most of these cases fallen into (ie. criminal law, divorce law, civil law, etc.)? Getting the answers to these questions will give you a good idea of what the attorney’s strengths are and whether or not these strengths will benefit your particular case.
Lastly, you will need to inquire about the attorney’s success rate. This is a hard inquiry to make, due to the fact that many attorneys will not divulge this information in a completely honest way. As we all know, lawyers are good at twisting facts and manipulating data (it is their job, after all), so you might have to be very specific when you begin discussing wins over losses.
Of course, after you have gathered all of this information, you need a way to verify it, right? Well, although it’s impossible to verify this information 100%, there are some resources that can help you get an idea of whether or not the attorney you talked to is telling the truth. Lawyers.com provides a wealth of information on many attorneys throughout the country, so this is a good place to start. You can also contact your local bar association to get more background info about the attorney. Lastly, you can ask the attorney for names of previous clients who you might be able to chat with concerning their experiences with the attorney.
If you’re just looking for a starting point when it comes to finding a professional, trustworthy attorney, we have some recommendations for you in and around Colorado. We’ve checked these attorneys out, and you can be sure that they will take the time to give you a thorough consultation on whatever legal issues you are having.
Recommended Attorneys and Law Firms:
May 26, 2011 1:53 pm 