New York is not the kind of town where being good enough is ever good enough—and, if it’s a lawyer you need, you should not settle for less than the best. At the end of the day, you want to be sure you’ve done everything within your power to get the best possible result for yourself, your business, your family.
There’s no reason to let chance dictate your choice of an advocate. To be sure, an awful lot of names appear on the roll of bar-accredited attorneys, and some people will have you believe that choosing one attorney in lieu of another is about the same as selecting a gas station. Nowadays, of course, people tend to pick pumps pretty much on price. But when folks shop for legal services simply according to cost, they usually get what they pay for—and sometimes a great deal less.
Don’t choose randomly. Asking around is one way to find a lawyer—assuming that the people you ask happen to be experts on the quality of legal advice. Or you could search law journals and law firm marketing materials, but they often hide inferior skills or—the most frequent bugaboo of dissatisfied clients—indifferent client service. Some lawyers take a retainer one day and forget your name the next.
Yet the lawyer selection process does not have to be such a forbidding task. The finest legal minds are all in this directory, The New York Area’s Best Lawyers, drawn from The Best Lawyers in America®. These first-tier attorneys, listed according to practice area specialty, were nominated by and voted in by their peers. They can’t pay to get their names included on the list and they have to remain at the top of their game to stay on it.New York magazine teamed with both Best Lawyers, the leading referral list in the legal profession, and ALM, the leading provider of legal news and resources for diverse professionals, to provide this invaluable resource for readers with every law-related need under the sun. No guide makes hiring a lawyer automatic. But this one certainly makes it easier. In a town full of stars, talent rules. Choose the best.