Lawyers practice different areas of the law, so it’s important to find a lawyer that can assist you in a case you are involved in.
Asking a personal injury lawyer to help with a criminal law case may not be the best move if you want to win your case – the lawyer might even reject your case because it’s not something they practice in their work.
To find the best lawyer for your case, you should find one that commonly practices and has skills in the type of law you need help with, according to Patrick J. Perotti, senior partner at Dworken & Bernstein Co., L.P.A. in Painesville, and Larry Zukerman, managing partner at Zukerman, Lear & Murray Co., L.P.A. in Cleveland.
“It all depends upon what type of lawyer they’re looking for and what type of activity they’re looking to have the lawyer work...there are lawyers who really do every type of work,” Zukerman said. “The first thing that you should do is figure out what problem you’re looking to solve. Once you, the potential client, determine what the problem you’re looking to solve is, then you can embark upon the journey of finding council.”
In order to find someone that can best represent your interests in your particular case, you can go online to start researching lawyers in the area, he explained. However, a better way to go about finding a lawyer and getting reviews from real people about their work is by asking a friend if they can refer you to someone.
If you don’t want to ask someone in your personal life, you can call the Cleveland Bar Association, he suggested. The association has a referral service full of lawyers that are “already vetted” and are able to represent people in multiple different cases.
While the Cleveland Bar Association is a good source to find lawyers in your area, they don’t have ratings through the association, Perotti said. Since there are no ratings, it can be difficult to determine which lawyer may be the best.
When reading reviews online to help make that distinction, keep in mind that those reviews are written by people you don’t know and are from their perspective of what happened, he said.
If you find a lawyer you would like to contact, reach out to their firm and make an appointment, Perotti said. The lawyer might not look over your case immediately, but instead may have a legal assistant reach out and collect information on the case so they can determine, from their side, if it’s a good fit.
The lawyer may decide that the case isn’t right for them to take on and, in that situation, you can ask who they recommend you to reach out to that would be a better fit for you and the case you need help with, Perotti said.
