Looking for an Attorney? Here's Counsel (original) (raw)
Business|Looking for an Attorney? Here's Counsel
https://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/11/business/looking-for-an-attorney-here-s-counsel.html
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- June 11, 1995
Credit...The New York Times Archives
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June 11, 1995
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Section 3, Page
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STEPHEN NAIFEH, new to Aiken, S.C., asked around town for a real estate lawyer and hired the first one he talked to. Susan Illston and her husband went to his old college roommate when they needed a will. Nicholas Carroll, who has moved often and hired lawyers at nearly every stop, has consulted the Yellow Pages.
And these three probably know as much as anybody about lawyers, if that's any indication of how hard it is to find a good one. Mr. Naifeh is co-editor of "The Best Lawyers in America" (Woodward/White, 1995); he and his partner are both lawyers and have a staff of seven who evaluate lawyers' evaluations of other lawyers. Ms. Illston is a Federal judge in San Francisco who spent 20 years as a trial lawyer. Mr. Carroll wrote "Dancing With Lawyers" (Royce Baker, 1992), a guide for small-business owners.
"People are really at sea," Judge Illston said. "I think most people have no idea where to start to look for a lawyer. It's a good question."
It's an especially good question in a nation of about 820,000 lawyers -- more per capita than just about anywhere else in the world. But the fact is, more people are turning to lawyers for help without much notion of what to look for, or what to look out for. Sixty-eight percent of respondents to a 1993 poll for The National Law Journal said they had used a lawyer in the previous five years, up from 52 percent in 1986.
As individuals with divorce papers, wrecked cars, workplace injuries and the like, they are not likely clients for top-tier firms with public relations directors. Most seek lawyers with modest practices and reasonable rates, a category bound to include a wide range of talent. So where do you look for these people, and how do you know if they're any good? As Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University puts it, "Most of us don't have general counsel."
But most of us do have common sense -- and that is what experts urge to use in pursuit of the perfect legal practitioner. One bit of advice that they never tire of repeating is "Ask obvious questions."
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