On Aug 30, 7:30 am, "jacks...@hotmail.com" <jacks...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I am from Monmouth County New Jersey and I am looking for a good,
> competent and experienced civil attorney. How does one go about
> finding such an attorney?
The best way is the old fashioned way, by word of mouth recommendation from someone you know and trust. If you have a family or company lawyer already, e.g. one who wrote your wills or handled some other business task for you, ask him or her who the "go to" guy or gal in your area is for the type of court case you're thinking about. If you don't have a relationship with a lawyer already, ask friends who their lawyer is, and then call that lawyer and ask the same questions you would if he were your own lawyer -- "who would you go to for X?" When you start getting the same name crop up several times, you've found your local guru on the subject. Then call the guru and make an appointment.
> I know there are legal referral services
They generally list anyone who _says_ their practice includes a certain field, and/or who paid for a listing; and the person at the other end of the phone is more than likely just reading you the next name on the rotating list, of all the local attorneys who want business in that field. There's usually no grading system or threshold of experience or competence to become a part of such a rotating referral list (other than that imposed by bar ethics on the lawyers themselves to meet at least the minimum standards of the profession). Keep in mind that 50% of the lawyers (doctors, bridge engineers, whatever) who hang out a diploma, graduated in the bottom half of their class. Not that grades alone are proof of anything in the real world: your case may need someone with tough "street smarts" even more than some law-review editor who analyzes everything in excruciating detail and never makes an impact with a jury. You can't put a gauge on charisma and persuasiveness.
> and the usual advertisements
> in the yellow pages and newspapers.
Paid for by the firms they are touting, and limited only by a very broadly-interpreted ethical requirement not to affirmatively misrepresent or mislead (exact regulations vary from state to state but the field of lawyer advertising was blown wide open after the Supreme Court decided Bates v. Arizona Bar a few decades ago). It's a good thing that as a result of advertising, more ordinary people now know they can afford a lawyer on a contingent fee when they're injured, and know that they may have legal rights that are worth money in certain commonly recurring situations when they didn't know that before. But IMO it's not a good thing when lawyers come across as blatant pitchmen and peddlers tooting their own horns of how many jillions they've won over the years for their clients, rather than as respected members of a learned helping profession.
> My concern is I don't know how
> experienced and competent they really are.
That's why you need to ask people you trust and not rely on some overall "seal of approval" to tell you.
> Is there an on-line (or off-line) reference that I can research a
> lawyer's "WIN / LOSE" stats?
Useless, even if you could find one. Want to know why? All it would show is the outcome of cases that lawyer actually filed in court, which are a tiny fraction of the ones that originally walk in the door or call on the telephone to see if they have a case. The bigger the firm's practice (not necessarily in terms of number of lawyers, but in terms of number of client intakes they do daily), the more they probably have a "volume cookie-cutter" rather than "custom made" approach, and the more cases they are going to reject up front, so the better their "won-lost" record is going to appear.
The big phonebook and TV advertisers are telling the truth -- they _have_ won jillions for their clients -- but they do it by spending jillions on TV time, and on junior staffers to screen incoming calls, taking only the cream of the crop, and leaving the rest for the "low volume" smaller firms. And the jillions are often composed of lots of smaller settlements because the volume merchandisers would much rather be bringing in new cases to keep the cash flowing than taking up their precious time with an actual trial of just one client's case -- so they often "fire" their clients (telling them to seek new counsel) if the client is not willing to accept an insurer's original lowball offer after an initial workup of the facts and settlement demand, rather than filing suit. Thus, most of the cases they actually take in and keep, they "win" in the sense of accomplishing a settlement, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.
On the other hand, the lawyers who rely mainly on referrals from their colleagues, as used to be the primary way of getting new business, and who are viewed as "troubleshooters" capable of sometimes working miracles with difficult cases, are the kind you want to look for. And those guys and gals often have a much spottier win-lose record, especially if they are willing to take on more than a few so called "unwinnable" cases on principle because they don't want anyone with a legitimate claim to be unable to find representation and have their day in court.
At trial, I hate to tell you, most of what a lawyer does (as long as he's not blaringly incompetent) doesn't usually matter very much except in the most closely divided cases. Most cases turn on their broad and plain facts, not the lawyer's fine arguments, and nothing the lawyer can do is going to change your case's underlying facts -- that would be the crime of falsifying evidence. You've got to live with what already actually happened -- no one can change that.
> Or, a listing of their opposing
> attorneys?
I'm not aware of any database that would compile such a list. You could get a few names yourself by browsing through the files at your court clerk's office but that would be markedly inefficient for what your intended purpose seems to be, which I assume is finding some shortcut to identifying the best lawyer in the area to bring your case to.
Big dirty secret: there is no "best" lawyer for a given client and case, just like there is no "best" match when you're on the lookout for a Significant Other to share your life with. You probably have an untold number of people who would be a good match in either case if you were to meet under the right circumstances. What matters, in finding a lawyer as in finding a spouse, is that you find someone you can relate to, that you trust and respect, that seems to speak your language, and that other people you trust seem to find trustworthy. Then let nature take its course, and treat each other fairly, and you can build something together.
It diminishes what you're looking for if you think of success only in terms of batting averages -- you want to know if the one you pick has the heart and the commitment it takes to get a fair result in _your_ case, not just someone who "always gets a hit" because he brushes off every pitch except the fat, soft, juicy ones right down the middle of the plate or because he's a big mean pro who only lets Little Leaguers pitch to him.
Keep in mind that even the best hitters facing real competition only connect about a third of the time against an average major league pitcher, and less than that if they're up against an ace. Likewise, if most of the cases that actually go to trial are so evenly balanced that they could go either way -- and they are, because most of the ones that are clearly going one way or the other are going to settle before trial, or be rejected by the attorney and never brought to light -- then even the best attorney, facing moderately competent opposition, is only going to win about 50% of the time.
Some kinds of cases, statistically, do much worse for the plaintiff (I assume that's what you propose to be, since most civil defendants don't go looking for a lawyer until _after_ they get sued, or let their insurer pick one for them). Car crashes and routine business disputes are the norm, splitting about 50/50. Slip and fall trials, in some jurisdictions run about 75/25 in favor of the defense. Civil rights and police brutality cases are getting much harder for a plaintiff to win at ALL in the current conservative judicial climate in some areas (e.g. the states within the 4th US Circuit).
And as always has been true, even in a relatively liberal era, creative new theories of the law (the kind the _truly_ best lawyers come up with) usually have to go through a long period of repeated losses before even a single court will recognize and adopt the new theory as valid. Suits against tobacco companies for causing cancer deaths, for example, have been brought for literally decades, and up until fairly recently every single case that came to trial was won by the tobacco industry. Does that make the pioneers who brought the first few dozens or hundreds of tobacco suits "bad" lawyers or "incompetent"? No, it makes them heroes who were willing to repeatedly battle an evil and powerful giant industry despite heavy initial losses, to eventually get justice for some (unfortunately not all) of their clients.
> I assume most civil cases are a matter of public record; as such, I
> thought they may be available as a reference source?
The individual cases, yes. Rarely are the kind of summary statistics you seek compiled into any kind of "box score". That's because law is not baseball.
> Even if the
> outcome of the case is be sealed, I assume the fact an action took
> place would be available.
Generally yes. But what would that tell you if you don't know the outcome? Hopefully the above comments will help you refocus your efforts in ways that will actually be useful to finding a good lawyer to help you with your case. Good luck,
--
This posting is for discussion purposes, not professional advice.
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Mike Jacobs
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