Fifteen things you can establish as fact before you sign anything, in a form you can work through and tick off. It does not rate the lawyer, because we do not rank lawyers. It tells you how much you have actually verified, and which of the five things that really matter you have not checked yet.
Fifteen items in four groups. Each one is something you can establish as a matter of record rather than something you have to form an opinion about. Five are marked as non-negotiable, and the read-out will name any of those you have left.
Nothing is stored and nothing is sent anywhere, so your ticks disappear when you close or reload this page. Print the page if you want to keep it.
All four are matters of public record and take about ten minutes.
Read these before signing. Afterwards they are settled and you are bound.
A general injury practice and a commercial vehicle practice are not the same thing.
Easy to skip, and the source of most complaints later.
0 of 15 verified
Nothing ticked yet. Work down the list and tick only the items you have actually done, because a checklist filled in optimistically is worse than no checklist.
Non-negotiable items you have not checked yet
If the count is low, that is information rather than a failure. Most people sign without doing any of this, and the entire list takes an afternoon.
Whether the person is any good. Fifteen ticks tell you somebody is licensed, undisciplined, transparent about money and specific about method. None of that is the same as judgment, and judgment is what you are actually buying.
Being honest about that is the difference between a useful instrument and a comforting one, and it is the thing most advice on how to vet an attorney leaves out.
Anybody researching how to vet an attorney will find plenty of lists. What most of them omit is this paragraph, and the omission is the reason they feel more reassuring than they should.
Because each is a matter of public record or written contract, which means an unticked box tells you that you have not looked rather than that you disagreed with somebody. There is nothing to weigh. Either you checked or you did not.
The other ten are valuable and several are more revealing. They are not on the escalated list because reasonable people could answer them differently.
Our guide on how vetting actually works explains the reasoning behind each of these at length, including what the professional conduct rules require about fee sharing.
Because a checklist cannot supply judgment, and one that pretends to is worse than useless. Every item was written so that you can look it up, read it, or ask a question with a definite answer. Nothing on the list asks you to rate anybody.
Items we considered and left off are as instructive as the ones we kept.
Because we do not rank attorneys, and a tool that turned fifteen ticks into a grade would be doing exactly that under another name. The count you see measures your own diligence. It is a report on you, not on them.
That distinction is easy to lose and it matters, so the tool never displays anything that could be read as a rating.
You can read how we vet attorneys and hold us to the same test this page sets for anybody else.
Reluctance to let you read the agreement before signing, a vague answer about who will run the file, no specific plan for the first week, and any pressure to decide immediately.
None of these requires expertise to notice, which is the point of writing them down.
The agreement not produced on request. It is a short document and you are entitled to read it before you are bound by it. No name for who runs the file. The person who signs you up is often not the person who does the work, and you should know both. Nothing specific about week one. A firm that cannot say what it would move to preserve has not thought about your case yet. A signature wanted today. Deadlines can be genuinely urgent. Signatures almost never are, and conflating them is a technique. Discomfort at being checked. Anybody sound about being verified will tell you where to look.
A closing note on what this page is and is not. It is an instrument, and a deliberately narrow one: fifteen checkable facts, five of them escalated, no grade at the end. The complete attorney vetting checklist takes an afternoon and most people give it no time at all. You can read how we match people with attorneys, and a free case review costs nothing.
This is a standard rather than an ordering. An attorney either clears it or does not.
Verified good standing with the state bar, with no unresolved discipline on record. You can check this yourself too.
Commercial vehicle and catastrophic injury work specifically, not a general practice that takes them occasionally.
Because reconstruction and medical experts have to be paid for long before any recovery arrives.
Fees and case costs put in writing up front, so you know exactly how it works before signing.
Tell us what happened and we will only match you when a case genuinely fits.
MVA Lawyer Network is a nationwide guide. Wherever it happened, we can connect you with an independent attorney licensed in that state.
The items on this list are checkable everywhere, but what you will find and where you will find it differs. Which body licenses attorneys and what its public register shows, whether discipline history is published and how far back, what a written fee agreement must contain and whether any cap applies, what must be disclosed when two firms share a fee and whether your written consent is required, and how a lawyer may describe experience or results in advertising are all matters of state regulation. Nothing here is a statement about the rules where you live, and nothing here rates or recommends any individual attorney. The deadline for bringing a claim, known as the statute of limitations, is running now.
A short note on method, because a checklist should be able to explain itself.
Every item had to be verifiable by you. The test applied to each candidate item was whether an ordinary person could establish it as a matter of record, read it in a document, or get a definite answer to it by asking. Anything requiring you to assess quality was rejected, because a checklist cannot supply judgment and a list that implies otherwise is a comfort rather than a tool. Section four names the items that were considered and left off, and reputation, awards, published results and confidence were all excluded for that reason.
The read-out reports on you, not on the attorney. This site publishes no ranking of attorneys, and a tool converting fifteen ticks into a grade would be a ranking wearing a different hat. So the counter measures how much you have verified, and the only thing it escalates is a non-negotiable item you have not looked at yet. It produces no percentage fitness score, no recommendation, and no comparison between firms. Section five sets out that reasoning in full.
This page is the instrument, not the explanation. Two other guides cover this ground in prose and both are linked above. One of them describes this page as the same material organized as a scoring exercise in a form you can tick off, and that description was located and read before this page was written, so the page was built to match what readers had already been promised.
Nothing is stored or sent. The ticks live in the page while it is open and nowhere else. There is no storage of any kind and nothing is transmitted, which is why printing is offered rather than saving.
How we keep this guide accurate and worth trusting.
Nothing on the list asks you to rate anybody, because a checklist cannot supply judgment.
We publish no ranking, so the count measures your diligence rather than their quality.
Awards, reputation and published results were considered and rejected, and we say why.
No storage, no transmission, and no form standing between you and the list.
MVA Lawyer Network is edited by Michael Mangione, who has spent more than twelve years working inside contingency-based law firms, building intake departments, designing qualification frameworks, and studying how claims are screened and pursued from the first call through resolution. Firms qualify clients rigorously and in writing. Almost nobody does the same thing in the other direction, which is the entire reason this list exists.
General information, not legal advice. Licensing and advertising rules differ by state, so check anything here with an attorney licensed where your case is.
No, and the tool is built so it cannot say that. The number counts what you have verified, not what they are worth. Fifteen ticks tell you somebody is licensed, undisciplined, clear about money and specific about method, which is a floor rather than a recommendation. Judgment is what you are actually buying and no list can measure it, which is what section two is about.
Because those five are matters of public record or written contract, so leaving one unticked means you have not looked rather than that you weighed something and disagreed. There is nothing to interpret: a license either is active or is not, and a costs clause either says who pays or does not. The other ten are valuable and several are more revealing, but reasonable people could answer them differently.
On the state bar's own website, not on the firm's site and not in a directory. The search is free and public in every state, though what it displays varies: some show discipline history in the same place and others hold it separately, which is why the list treats those as two items. If you cannot find somebody, that is worth asking about directly rather than assuming the worst or the best.
They were considered and deliberately left off. Many awards are paid placements, so a tick box for them would reward marketing spend rather than tell you anything. Published results are worse: a figure from another case says nothing reliable about yours, which is a position taken consistently across this site. Section four lists everything that was rejected and the reasoning for each.
Yes, and it is the best way to use it, though not as a scoreboard. Ticks record what you did rather than how firms compare, and you may simply have pushed harder in one conversation. What is genuinely comparable is the answers themselves: two firms asked what they would preserve in week one will give you very different replies, and that difference is more informative than any count.
No. Nothing is stored and nothing is transmitted anywhere, so reloading clears everything. That is deliberate, and it is why the tool offers a print button rather than a save. If you want to keep a record, print the page once you have worked through it, which also gives you something to take into a meeting.
Treat that as one of the more useful answers you will get. Nothing on this list is unreasonable, most of it is public record, and a firm comfortable with being checked will simply tell you where to look. Firms qualify clients carefully and in writing before taking a case; a person doing the same in the other direction is behaving normally, not awkwardly.
Injury firms generally work on a contingency basis, meaning the fee is a percentage of what is recovered set out in the written agreement and there is nothing to pay up front. Case costs, meaning experts and records and filing fees, are a separate item from the fee, and the agreement should say plainly who carries them and what happens to them if the case does not succeed.
Yes. What you share in a case review is kept private and is used only to match you with an attorney who fits your situation. One distinction is worth understanding: true legal confidentiality, called attorney-client privilege, only attaches once you actually have an attorney-client relationship with a lawyer. Submitting a form to a referral service is not the same thing. If that matters to you, raise it directly with the attorney.
Nothing. We are a free, independent referral service, not a law firm, and we do not give legal advice. Requesting a case review costs you nothing and puts you under no obligation. When a situation fits, we connect you with an independent attorney who reviews it directly, and we may be paid a referral fee by that attorney. That fee does not add anything on top of their percentage.
One short, private form. No cost, no obligation, and no fee unless there is a recovery.