In the post-Enron environment, in-house corporate counsel are wise to ensure that their selection of an outside attorney is based on an objective evaluation of that attorney's record.
Evaluating potential outside counsel's real-world experience is critical to fulfilling in-house practitioners' objective of retaining lawyers who can best represent the company's legal interests, says Robert Haig, partner at Kelley Drye & Warren LLP in New York City. "Experience is a leading indicator of expertise. The wrong lawyer may mismanage the issue, and may bring great embarrassment to the business," says Haig, who also is editor-in-chief of Successful Partnering Between Inside and Outside Counsel, the definitive work on establishing and maintaining effective and successful corporate legal relationships.
Recent surveys underscore Haig's advice. After "past relationships," the 2003 ACCA/Serengeti survey on Managing Outside Counsel reported that the most important criteria used to select new outside counsel are: reputation of individual lawyer, lawyer expertise in a specific area and firm expertise in specific areas. Until recently however, finding objective information about an attorney's or law firm's experience has proven a challenge. In-house attorneys have learned to "triangulate" information about their prospective selections as a way of verifying their choice. This goes beyond tapping existing referral networks or looking for friends in old-fashioned directories. A more thorough process includes sifting through court records to verify experience, collecting relevant published works by the attorney, and calling past clients.
FindLaw makes this process easier. The company recently launched the Thomson Legal Record, a first-of-its kind resource designed help in-house corporate attorneys make more informed decisions when hiring outside counsel. The Thomson Legal Record enables users to research and verify an attorney's realworld litigation experience by combining a high-level view of an attorney's litigation history drawn from Westlaw®, with an attorney's West Legal Directory® profile, and published articles on FindLaw.com.
Visitors to the FindLaw Corporate Counsel Center (https://corporate.findlaw.com) or FindLaw for Legal Professionals Web site (https://lp.findlaw.com) can now access the Thomson Legal Record for free to evaluate an attorney's skills and experience. While users can still find attorneys by name, practice area and location, the Thomson Legal Record introduces an entirely new dynamic--the ability to search for experience on specific legal matters, in specific courts and before specific judges.
"The ultimate goal is to the find the right lawyer, with the right expertise for the right legal situation," Haig notes. "That means employing an expansive network, and using new tools to find and evaluate candidates."
When viewing a West Legal Directory listing or profile, the Thomson Legal Record will also automatically display the attorney's most recent litigation record, including the latest federal and state cases the candidate tried, and the judges who handled the cases. Visitors who want to read the full text of the attorney's cases can easily link directly to Westlaw. In the free view of an attorney's experience, the Thomson Legal Record will also display recent published articles and seminar materials by the attorney. Moreover, users can launch a very precise LawCrawler™ search from the attorney's record. The LawCrawler, which is powered by Google, reveals all other information about the attorney that might be available on the Web. By combining these elements in the Thomson Legal Record, FindLaw powerfully completes many of the processes corporate legal departments normally conduct when researching an attorney's experience.
FindLaw plans to integrate even more information into the Thomson Legal Record in the coming months. Beyond litigation histories, the Thomson Legal Record will include patent information from Thomson & Thomson, securities and transaction experience from Thomson Financial, plus more information from Westlaw, including dockets, jury verdicts, law review articles and more.
"There's simply no better way to evaluate experience than to view the actual record of achievement as told by trusted third-party sources," says Debbie Monroe, president and CEO of FindLaw. "No legal research service is more comprehensive or trusted than Westlaw, and no company tracks the volume and detail of corporate transactions as Thomson Financial."
For more information about the Thomson Legal Record, visit the FindLaw Corporate Counsel Center at https://corporate.findlaw.com.
Steve Noel is the Senior Director of the FindLaw portal, responsible for strategic planning, service development and user experience. He formerly headed the FindLaw Corporate Counsel Center. Before joining FindLaw, he was an associate in the Washington DC office of Jones Day Reavis & Pogue.