How do I look up the trial experience of a lawyer?
<p>I want to review the trial experience of a particular plaintiff lawyer in Ontario.  Where can I get this information?</p>

<p><em>. . . no answer</em></p>

<p>Then how does one look up a lawyer's trial record in other jurisdictions around the world?</p>

<p>Maybe I can adapt the method to Ontario.</p>

<p>Sounds like you are doing this search surreptitiously. If not, the process is the same, except for asking the lawyer himself.</p>

<p>Regardless of the actual value of knowing a lawyer's trial experience - the value and knowledge of an attorney is much more than trial experience, and the best indicators of experience and judgement are the least public aspects of a lawyer's work - there are two major sources of information: public search engines and court record systems. Your searches will yield a lot of raw data in terms of personal names, case names and legal documents that you will need to use your own judgement when analyzing.</p>

<p><strong>Google:</strong> Best thing to do is start with Google and the lawyer's name. That may sound simplistic, but a simple Google search will give you any firms he is associated with, any news articles with his name in conjunction with trial cases, professional affiliations, and more. Once you find any references, you will find case names, names of past clients, and more. Search again. Follow all the rabbit trails.</p>

<p>Google doesn't typically show search results from commercial databases and library catalogs. Most public libraries have access to commercial journal and magazine databases that cover thousands of titles, including law journals, as well as databases of historical newspapers; if not, university libraries do. You may need to go to a state or provincial law college to access legal journals.</p>

<p>Contact the people - past clients, etc. - you find and ask them about the lawyer and the trials in question. I doubt very much any lawyer will have anything more to say that <em>you need to talk to him yourself</em>.</p>

<p>Bear in mind that if you misrepresent yourself to people you contact about the lawyer - you say you're looking for a long lost cousin on the pretext of finding out information about the lawyer and his cases - you're treading a fine legal line called pretexting. Pretext is legally defined as a reason for an action which is false while offered to cover up the true intention. If you pretext, it can come back to bite you.</p>

<p><strong>Court records:</strong> Find the court record system for your jurisdiction. These will greatly vary, and vary between civil and criminal courts. Google will lead you to the website of the court jurisdiction in question; there will be different methods of access to the court records systems. </p>

<p>The big problem you're up against is that many cases are settled out of court, and there will be no records in court systems. And if there are records, you will have to parse the decisions to find out if the lawyer in question was actually involved.</p>

<p>As a last resort (other than asking the lawyer himself), hire an unemployed just-graduated law student to research for you :)</p>

<p>I am absolutely not qualified in any kind of law, and I don't have any experience with the legal system. However, if you change "experience" to "record" on Google, it will yield this answer to a similar question:</p>

<p><a href="https://www.quora.com/How-can-you-find-an-attorneys-record-of-wins-and-losses-in-litigation" rel="nofollow">https://www.quora.com/How-can-you-find-an-attorneys-record-of-wins-and-losses-in-litigation</a></p>

<p>It makes some good points, and also provides some food for thought on the litigation process and the possibility that trial experience itself may not be the end-all-be-all of an attorney. I hope this helps! :)</p>

<p>All of the responses were helpful.  The eventual approach I took isn’t much different from BlueDogRanch’s answer.  Here’s what worked for me:</p>

<h2>1. Search the web</h2>

<p>Search by name.  Filter by terms such as ‘lawyer’, ‘attorney’, ‘counsel’, ‘advocate’ and ‘law firm’.</p>

<p>For one lawyer I looked at, this alone was enough.  His reputation was so well established and his trial experience so widely reported, there was no point in looking further.</p>

<h2>2. Search the court records</h2>

<p>The Canadian Legal Information Institute (<a href="http://www.canlii.org/en/index.html" rel="nofollow">CanLII</a>) covers the provincial, territorial and federal courts.  For non-Canadian jurisdictions, see CanLII’s list of <a href="http://www.canlii.org/en/international.html" rel="nofollow">other countries’ databases</a>, or
the Free Access to Law Movement’s (FALM) <a href="http://www.fatlm.org/members/current/" rel="nofollow">member list</a>.</p>

<p>Jury trials aren’t recorded in CanLII, at least not for Ontario’s civil courts.  Instead what I found were secondary judgements on appeal, on apportioning legal costs, and so forth.  These after-judgements are numerous — apparently the rule rather than the exception — so they open a window at least partly onto the original trials.</p>

<p>Search for the lawyer’s name.  I think anyone with extensive trial experience will show up.</p>

<h2>3. Read the marketing material of the lawyer’s firm</h2>

<p>The last thing I looked at for one lawyer, a brochure printed by his firm, was full of citations of past cases and judgements, which I could easily verify.</p>

<h2>4. Ask the lawyer</h2>

<p>Commenter jqning suggests, “the way understand a lawyer’s trial experience is to ask the attorney.”</p>

<p>Actually, I never had to resort to this, but it sounds like a sensible fallback.</p>

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