How to Cross-Examine your Lawyer

Inc. Magazine has an article entitled "Learn to Love Your Lawyer" that teaches clients how to select and manage an attorney.  I especially enjoyed this segemet of the article:

Savvy legal consumers ask questions -- lots of them. If you're interviewing a litigator, ask how many jury verdicts he has won (himself, not a colleague or the firm in general) in the same area of law, and in the same courthouse. If the answer comes back "plenty," ask for a list of those cases with the names and telephone numbers of references. There's no better way to smoke out litigators whose actual experience consists of carrying the bags for a more senior partner at a two-hour witness deposition four years ago. The same goes for business lawyers. When a mergers-and-acquisitions partner confidently ticks off the half-dozen deals she and her firm have done in your industry, call a time-out. In which deals did this lawyer (not someone else in her firm) serve as lead counsel, not just as a bit player? "Nobody asks these questions," says Fred Bartlit, a Chicago litigator who often works with entrepreneurs.

That's very sound advice for clients, and for others looking for the truth.
(Via MyShingle)

Comments

[Aaron]

I am not at all convinced that the inquiry, "How many trials have you won in this area of law, in this courthouse" is a good measure of anything.

Most civil litigators I know - that is, people who devote their full-time careers to trial litigation - try zero to one case per year. Sure, there are some exceptions, and sure it is important that an attorney or firm be able to raise a credible threat of trial to maximize a settlement. But even with a "busy" civil litigator, the litigation is likely to be on a number of different types of claim and in a number of different counties - so should you disqualify a guy who many believe to be the best malpractice litigator in the state because he's only tried one case in a specific county's courts, and lost that case?

But unless the question is being posed to somebody who tries a lot of misdemeanor offenses, or a criminal defense attorney who has spent a career in a single county's courts, how significant will the answer be? And if the question is posed to a criminal defense attorney, I somehow doubt that the phone numbers of former clients will be forthcoming.

Further, with no disrespect intended to litigators, some of the best guys in the courtroom need a lot of help getting to that point. So the partner who builds the cases may not be the partner who tries the cases. (Or even the solo who builds a case may bring in a 'hired gun' to assist with or conduct the trial.) Similarly, there's an extremely good civil litigation firm in Michigan that almost never tries cases, because they select their cases well and are relentless in their pretrial work. Should they be disqualified because they routinely get huge settlements on cases that a lesser firm might have to try?