Choosing a Lawyer
This website used to have an explanation of how to go about hiring an attorney, including a long list of the standards I strive to meet. But about halfway through any long list, with all the noise that surrounds us today, we start to hear a voice saying, “Blah, blah, blah, blah!” or “Yada, yada, yada, yada!” So, shorter and more directly to the point:
An attorney should know something about the law, and know where and how to find more law; after all, the modern world is a thicket of often contradictory statutes and case decisions. But this is a minimum, and we have to hope that, if the Supreme Court grants someone a license to practice law, then the minimum standard is met.
It is also a good thing for an attorney to have an accurate picture of how the world works outside a law office or a courtroom. And it is a very good thing for an attorney to understand how people operate and why they do the things they do. But these tools, like any others, can work for or against us, depending on how they are used.
The fact is that there are lawyers who take advantage of clients. After all, in the short run, a lawyer could make a lot of money that way. But there are a lot of ways to make money, and most of them do not require us to sacrifice our good names, the respect of our neighbors and our own peace of mind and self-respect.
So, the only questions that really means anything is, “Can I trust this attorney?” and the only way to answer that is according to what we have learned about people, going along, throughout our lives. If the answer is "yes," then it's worth taking a chance. If the answer is “No,” then the suspicion will never go completely away, so it is best to keep looking.