If you find a need to hire a lawyer, there are a few things you should always take into consideration before making a decision on which lawyer to hire.
You should know if the lawyer has had any complaints made about him or his techniques as well as finding out about cases he or she may have had difficulties with in the past. One way to verify if there are any complaints about the lawyer would be to check with your states Bar Association. The Bar Association is the organization that keeps track of lawyers and handles complaints about lawyers.
You can look up your local Bar Associations contact information in your local yellow pages, or by contacting librarians at local law libraries in your area to get the address. Once you have the mailing address for the Bar Association, you should send a polite letter inquiring as to whether the lawyer you are seeking information about has any complaints on file or not. The Bar Association will not tell you what the complaints were for if there are any on file, they will only tell you if any have been filed.
Once you have a record of any (or no) complaints, you should then verify how long the lawyer has been practicing law. If the lawyer has 3 complaints and has only been practicing law for 6 months, then you should definitely locate another lawyer. Yet if the lawyer has 3 complaints in 30 years, that’s a very good record which is an indication of a very good lawyer.
If your case is going to trial, you will also need to verify how much experience the lawyer has in trial court. Many cases never end up in court in front of a Judge or jury, so some lawyers never have a need to appear in court. If your case seems to be one that will most likely end up in court, then you need to make sure that the lawyer you are looking to hire has plenty of trial experience before a Judge and jury. If the lawyer does not have adequate experience, then you may wish to seek another lawyer to hire.
You should also ask the lawyer about the success rate of his cases. If he has handled 100 cases and has won 80 of them, then 80% would be the lawyer’s success rate. A lawyer will usually say that some cases did not require “winning” or “losing”, and that all that those cases required was a happy client once the case was resolved. If the lawyer makes a statement like this, then you have found an intelligent attorney who understands exactly what his or her clients need him or her to do. If he has few or no bar complaints and has been practicing law for several years (and if he or she has trial experience if you plan to go to trial) then you have probably found the perfect lawyer to handle your case.
If the lawyer refuses to address your question about success rate, or if he or she tries to respond with an answer like “You should be happy I am taking your case, what does my success rate have to do with anything. I’m practicing law so I must be pretty successful” then you should leave immediately and look for another lawyer. This shows that the lawyer has a bad attitude towards clients and feels that they are justified in replying in this manner just because he or she passed a bar exam. If a lawyer will not answer positively about his or her success rate or any other reasonable inquiry, then he or she is not a good lawyer to hire at all. Scheidungsanwalt