Vetting an Attorney Based on Trial Experience

[free9man]

You are now on my ignore list for overgeneralizing, saying nothing of substance and only repeating what others say.

Oh woe is me! I gave you correct information from real experience but you don't wanna hear it so you're going to ignore me. Which is funny because I said pretty much the same thing as Taxing. Shucks.

[Brian57]

I am saying that there is no public database that has gathered the information that you want, in a searchable mode on the internet. There are lots of databases that are only available to attorneys and judges, but those are local, closed system databases. There may be some local court system, in some states, who have made similar databases available to the public, but they are likely few and far between.

Even case law is difficult to find sometimes if you are not an attorney who has paid for access to Lexis Nexis or some other paid for use search engine. Its out there, but you have to check many different sources to find it.

Do you realize how much work, cost and effort it would require to put all of the information you would want in an accessible database? That is why they are usually NOT free.

That is what I was looking for. Thank you.

I never asked if I could access them. Like in real estate, those search engines are only available to professionals in the field who are willing to pay for it.

So let me ask you; have you used a search engine like that? It seems it would be easy for it to show stats on any given attorney? Cases filed, cases tried, cases settled without trial, cases settled prior to a verdict, etc... It should all be there in black and white on any attorney.

[PayrolGuy]

Yes, the first "was" should have been "wasn't".

[Brian57]

Of course there services with data bases containing court decisions, though those are primarily appellate court decisions, not trial court cases. If you access the trial court directly it may have a data base of its cases that you can search for trial court information. But what you won't find is a database in which someone has compiled statistics to try to assess attorney performance. One of the reasons for that is that the nature of law practice makes it difficult to develop meaningful objective statistics to do that.

But data is just that, data. What a person does with it is up to them.

I will ask you; Have you accessed those proprietary search engines? If so, what did they offer. I can tell you that I've searched real estate on several of those proprietary systems and they tell you everything, 'meaningful' or not.

[Mr. Knowitall]

There are lots of databases that are only available to attorneys and judges, but those are local, closed system databases.

There is no database available to lawyers that recounts how many lawsuits a particular lawyer has filed and the dispositions of those lawsuits, nor would the dispositional information in such a theoretical database be useful to determine the quality of a laywer's legal services. Similarly, no such database is available to judges.

So let me ask you; have you used a search engine like that?

You mean, has anybody used a database that does not exist? No, because... wait for it... it does not exist.

[Brian57]

There is no database available to lawyers that recounts how many lawsuits a particular lawyer has filed and the dispositions of those lawsuits, nor would the dispositional information in such a theoretical database be useful to determine the quality of a laywer's legal services. Similarly, no such database is available to judges.

Don't hedge your statement with what they contain. Do they exist? Are they proprietary? And, if you use these databases, what do they contain? And keep your opinion of the data being 'meaningless' to yourself. That is up to the subscriber to determine.

[Mr. Knowitall]

If you want to spend millions of dollars creating such a system, perhaps your magical lawyer can win you enough money to pay your way.

But really -- are you incapable of reading? There is no such system. There is no such system. Do you get that?

If you don't like being recognized as a babbling idiot, stop posting idiotic babble.

[cbg]

One more time.

There is no database available to lawyers, judges, the general public, Congress, the United Nations, aliens either legal or illegal, the MIB, the MLB, the United Federation of Planets, or the man in the moon, that keeps records of how many lawsuits an attorney has filed. There is no database available to lawyers, judges, the general public, Congress, the United Nations, aliens either legal or illegal, the MIB, the MLB, the United Federation of Planets, or the man in the moon, that keeps records of the disposition of any given attorney's cases. There is no database available to lawyers, judges, the general public, Congress, the United Nations, aliens either legal or illegal, the MIB, the MLB, the United Federation of Planets, or the man in the moon, that keeps records of how many cases an attorney has settled. Such data bases do not exist. Period.

[asa_jim]

Honestly, life is too short to waste any of it on trolls... oh crap, I just wasted 30 seconds of mine... drat!

[Taxing Matters]

I will ask you; Have you accessed those proprietary search engines? If so, what did they offer. I can tell you that I've searched real estate on several of those proprietary systems and they tell you everything, 'meaningful' or not.

No, because I have never seen any such databases for statistics on lawyers, and I have looked for all manner of law related computer services. I can access by computer courts in which I practice to look up docket records of cases. I can use my online legal research service to do a variety of things, primarly research of statutes, regulations, case law, etc along with various public record searches (liens, etc). But no service offers a database organized to provide statistics on attorneys. With all due respect, llworking is not an attorney and I dare say not really in a position to say to what databases lawyers and judges would have exclusive access.

That such databases might exist for some other profession does not tell you anything about what is available regarding lawyers.

There is no such system. There is no such system.

That is the bottom line, I think. I have never encountered such a system in years of legal practice, and doubt that one will be created anytime soon because it would be costly to create and the utility of it quite limited.