Let’s say I want to research a lawyer here in America before hiring her. Is it possible to do a search in some legal database that would show all the cases that lawyer had previously participated in?
If so, what sort of other information might be available? Suppose I naively want to know the lawyer’s win/loss ratio, or number of cases settled before trial, or the number of patent cases vs. divorce proceedings over the last 5 years, or some other statistic. Perhaps there are services like P.I.s that can do such a search for you and give you a high-level summary?
I would be surprised if such a search were possible, but I’ve been wrong before.
This question is inspired by seeing a pundit attorney holding forth about something, and suspecting that the dude wasn’t the expert that he claimed to be on the topic. I wondered if you could find out just how many cases the guy had actually argued in the last few years.
Just going to point out that all this will tell you is whether the attorney is an experienced trial attorney. The vast majority of lawyering never leads to a trial. Quite a bit of corporate law is about telling the company what to do to comply with the law; individuals often need the same kind of advice, too. Even where there’s a dispute, a good lawyer may spend a lot of time telling her clients “No, you don’t have a case you can win”, or similar things.
And even if there is a case, the vast majority of them settle before a full-blown trial.
Westlaw has a data base of cases an attorney has appeared in. They call it a litigation report. It is not completely accurate. I think the list for me has all of the Federal Cases I’ve appeared in, but only some of the state court cases. You could investigate the pundit attorney this way. It does break it down by type of case. (again, not necessarily accurate, but not bad).
It would take some effort (cross referencing with PACER) to figure out which ones went to trial and who won. You won’t find much information on the settlements, as many are “confidential.”
Moreover, as Quercus said, things like win-loss ratio don’t tell you much about the quality of the lawyer, and more about the quality of the cases he or she gets. (Some very good criminal defense attorneys don’t win too many cases).
There are also jury verdict and settlement reports that are tracked, but again, not comprehensive.
here’s an example. Other states have similar services.
ETA: I just pulled up my Westlaw report. It’s very inaccurate.
In Ohio, no. You can check on Westlaw, LexisNexis, Casemaker and other databases to see the reported cases in which a lawyer has appeared, but that will omit a lot - perhaps even the vast majority - of that lawyer’s cases, since most court decisions are not reported.
If you know in what court that lawyer regularly appears, you may be able to check the court’s own records, but that would just be a list of cases and wouldn’t tell you much, if anything, about the lawyer’s strengths and weaknesses. You could see his or her pleadings, though, and if they were a mess, that would tell you something.
Some local bar associations offer a lawyer-referral service, but those don’t praise or blast individual lawyers. You can also check with your local bar disciplinary committee, or with the supreme court of your state, to see if the lawyer has been on the wrong end of a disciplinary matter, and learn its (or their) outcome.
Best to ask around among family or friends and see if they can recommend a good lawyer. You can also ask the lawyer for references of, say, three recent clients who had cases similar to your own. Your first meeting with a prospective lawyer is usually free.
I typically just search for the attorney’s name in quotes in LexisNexis (to my everlasting regret, our firm doesn’t use Westlaw). Lexis has the advantage of having a more robust database of administrative and other decisions.
For a number of states (like Maryland) you can do a free case search from the state website but this search usually flags the Plaintiff and Defendant names and lists the case status open/closed and disposition not the atty.
Also, per what the others said a lot of the better attorneys are trying NOT to have their cases go to trial and success is when there is no trial. Reputation among other lawyers is useful info and if it’s a criminal matter the gold standard is if you can get a local assistant states atty, police detective or similar to get chatty in a bar or socializing and talk about who the most effective local/regional atty is. They will know because they see of lot of attorneys perform and she/he’s the one pulling his clients fat out of the fire with them.
Thanks to everyone for the responses. It sounds like Westlaw or LexisNexis would be the closest to the sort of database I’m imagining, but neither are comprehensive. I am not surprised, especially given multiple jurisdictions.
I’ll repeat that I’m not in the market for a lawyer. I acknowledge that the majority of an attorney’s work may involve avoiding trials, etc. etc. I was just curious as to whether the public output (cases argued, motions filed, amicus briefs, % settlements, whatever) for attorneys was tracked in an organized way that was searchable.