Attention, Lawyers. Time to Vote for “Best Lawyers 2009″

Posted on January 9th, 2009 1:34pm by Tim Rogers
Filed under Local News

Please note: this year, for the first time, we’re doing only “personal lawyers.” No M&A attorneys and the like. In 2009, we’re focusing on: Bankruptcy & Workout (personal bankruptcy), Consumer Issues, Criminal Defense, Elder Law, Family Law (divorce), Labor & Employment, Personal Injury (plaintiffs), Real Estate, Tax, Traffic Tickets, Trusts & Estates, and White Collar Defense/Antitrust. If you practice in one of these areas, we invite you to tell us who are the best lawyers working in the Dallas area. Voting ends at the end of the month.

9 comments

  1. I’d rather vote for worst lawyers. I’d name a few here but you’d probably delete the names.

    @ 3:04 pm on January 9, 2009

  2. No ‘best of’ category for Complex Litigation?

    BTW – The best traffic ticket lawyers are the ones who let their paralegals do all the work while they collect a paycheck. I’m not a lawyer and I have argued my way out of a ticket in traffic court. Including them in a ‘best of’ list sounds more like you are trolling for advertising dollars. Way to include the lowest common denominators…

    @ 3:10 pm on January 9, 2009

  3. @ DGirl:
    I’m with you on that. There are too many attorneys collecting a paycheck for filling in the blanks on boilerplate forms and charging their clients exhorbitant rates. Not to mention the lazy ones who have the ethical mindset of Bob Loblaw.

    @ 3:14 pm on January 9, 2009

  4. Family law is crawling with attorneys who perpetuate and incite conflict to make more money. There are a few good ones but a lot of bad ones.

    @ 3:20 pm on January 9, 2009

  5. Once again, I’m not sure that the balloting procedure is without an inherent bias. As a solo practitioner in a specialized field, I have many attorneys that I would recommend and refer business to in other areas that I consider excellent. However, within my area, I consider myself at least competent, and have obvious disincentives to advertise for my “competition.” Because I am prohibited from voting for attorneys outside my area, my input is rejected. The unspoken reality of the balloting is a series of “scratch my back and I yours” arrangements between firms and attorneys that shuts out a number of excellent and deserving solo practitioners.

    By no means am I discrediting the attorneys that are selected. However, I believe that a great deal of valuable input is lost by restricting balloting to an attorney’s practice area.

    @ 8:49 pm on January 9, 2009

  6. @ Solo Practitioner: Several years back, we made the decision to limit voting to within specialties, on the advice of a very respected lawyer whose name you would know. The idea was to thwart those who were orchestrating the trading of blocs of votes. No system (that we’ve been able to come up with) is without its faults. We think this one has the fewest.

    @ 4:03 pm on January 11, 2009

  7. @DGirl: Damn, but you are right. The entire Family Court system in Dallas is filled with the most corrupt legal practitioners that I have ever seen in my entire life. And the worst part is that the Family Court judges are in bed with these bastards.

    @ 6:41 pm on January 11, 2009

  8. While I acknowledge that the block trading can/will occur, I would think that the amount of personal information required to vote could minimize this. Supplementing our name and bar number with an office size question would give guidance to those reading the results and provide for those at large firms to vote for small firms or boutiques to which they refer niche projects, and solo practitioners could vote for the big firm attorneys to whom they send work outside of their specialty.

    Seems like this could be worked around.

    @ 10:36 pm on January 11, 2009

  9. What was the thinking in leaving out practitioners of Juvenile Law?

    @ 7:01 pm on January 20, 2009