How to Find, Evaluate and Engage a Lawyer

The frequency in which you find and engage a lawyer is less than you find and engage a doctor. Because, when you are ill or when you meet with an accident, you feel the effects of your illness or sufferings instantaneously; whereas, the legal effects of any episode that happens in your life may take its own course; so you feel the pinch of legal effects somewhat belatedly, though its dimension may differ from person to person,on the basis of the stake on which the issue revolves around.

Therefore, it goes without saying, that you have a breathing time to tackle the problem that involves a legal question or issue within which you have to find a lawyer; then evaluate the lawyer’s performance or services rendered by him before finally deciding to engage his services.

The question of finding, evaluating and engaging a lawyer for your legal problem depends upon your literacy level, gravity of the situation, the dimension of your sufferings and your economic status.

For example, you have a problem with your neighbor resulting in a tiff, war of words or exchange of blows; or you have met with an accident, sustained a grievous injury, hospitalized and bedridden. You have plenty of assets in your estate but you have not made any arrangements legally to whom they should go after your death; but now you are ill and bedridden. When you are an illiterate, normally you are at your receiving end, since you are always dragged into a legal dispute by unscrupulous people.You don’t know whom, where and when you should approach to tackle your problem. Therefore, you should always depend upon the services of a literate person who has some experience in this regard, to get yourself bailed out from your problems.

In countries like India and her neighbors like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka, the illiterate people always used to depend upon the literate people or agents to find and engage the services of a lawyer. Therefore, it is incumbent upon these illiterate people to seek the help of those people, known for their honesty and integrity to act as their agents, lest there is every chance of  being cheated and exploited, besides getting even more entangled with legal problems leading to multiplicity of proceedings.

Besides, evaluating the services of a lawyer is quite difficult, because in the case of an architect or a civil engineer, you have the standing structures built by him to provide you with a monumental proof of his ability to provide the requisite service; but in the case of a lawyer, you have no such proofs; however you have no other go but to evaluate a lawyer only on the basis of his or her past performance as narrated by his clients who availed his services or who knew about him. Sometimes, a lawyer’s pre-eminence and his capacity can be assessed through some sensational cases handled by him as reported in the law journals or as published in the web sites. However, such evaluation of a lawyer is possible only for a literate and not to an illiterate person.