{"id":4486,"date":"2003-06-17T18:16:33","date_gmt":"2003-06-17T22:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/formerlyknownas\/2003\/06\/17\/should-inexperienced-lawyers-"},"modified":"2011-08-05T15:00:54","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T19:00:54","slug":"should-inexperienced-lawyers-be-on-bar-referral-panels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2003\/06\/17\/should-inexperienced-lawyers-be-on-bar-referral-panels\/","title":{"rendered":"Should Inexperienced Lawyers Be on Bar Referral Panels?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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MyShingle’s<\/A> <\/FONT>Carolyn Elefant <\/B>raises a good question today about the criteria to use for Lawyer Referral Systems.  Carolyn takes note of a June 13th article in bizjournal.com<\/A> <\/B>(free, registration required) that describes the new “objective criteria” being adopted as of September 1st by the Boston Bar’s LRS<\/P><\/B>
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The standards will apply to four areas <\/B>most often sought out by consumers calling the LRS — personal injury, bankruptcy, employment issues and discrimination. To be eligible for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy case, for example, an attorney must have completed 3 liquidations. Carolyn muses:<\/P>
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“On the one hand, how can one disagree with the Bar’s goal of enhancing the quality of legal services for consumers? Yet, on the other hand, the Bar proposal creates a “chicken and egg” problem: new lawyers who don’t have the requisite experience can’t get in the door to take referrals and yet without being able to access the referral program as a source of clients, new lawyers may have difficulty in finding clients with whom to gain experience.”<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
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Carolyn suggests a mentoring program<\/STRONG> might work to safeguard clients while allowing lawyers to gain needed experience.  I’m not so sure mentoring will work.  It’s hard enough to mentor an attorney in your own office suite; extra-office mentoring might turn out to be less than useful, even if you could find experienced lawyers willing to give new rivals a helping hand.  Carolyn suggests paying the mentor, but who would you attract as mentors?  Also, the co-counsel issues might get compicated for clients.<\/P>
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Instead, why not require training<\/STRONG> in the subject area plus <\/B>requiring attorneys with experience below a particular level to inform clients <\/STRONG>in writing of the number of similar cases they have already handled?  Then, the client can decide on tradeoffs — e.g.,<\/I> inexperience, lower fees, smaller caseload, or enthusiasm vs.<\/I> more experience, higher fees, large caseload (and possible ennui<\/I>).<\/P><\/B>
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Checking out the current LRS Standards and Rules<\/A> <\/B>used by the Boston Bar, I learned that “An applicant may only list areas in which he or she is competent and either experienced or trained<\/EM>.” Fair enough, but then I was surprised to see that a “panel member may select up to thirty-six (36) practice areas<\/B> for referrals.  Isn’t that a heck of a lot of (purported) experience or training?<\/P>
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Two Cents <\/B>from Jackie Cliente<\/B>: Editor promised this would be a short posting. Everything is relative and <\/EM>relevant for him.<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE><\/FONT><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MyShingle’s Carolyn Elefant raises a good question today about the criteria to use for Lawyer Referral Systems.  Carolyn takes note of a June 13th article in bizjournal.com (free, registration required) that describes the new “objective criteria” being adopted as of September 1st by the Boston Bar’s LRS The standards will apply to four areas most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2926],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pre-06-2006"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kP1R-1am","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4486"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14265,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4486\/revisions\/14265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}