How to Find, Evaluate and Engage a Lawyer

In the case of literate people, the situation is somewhat different. Still they are laymen vis-à-vis a lawyer. These literate people despite of being literate, still lack the wherewithal of how to find, engage and evaluate a lawyer to a given legal problem or situation. However, still they can make best use of their literacy to their best advantage and avoid engaging middlemen to find and engage the services of a lawyer.

First of all these people should know how to identify and differentiate a particular dispute, whether it is civil or criminal. Any complaint made to a police station against you or any situation or problem involving a crime that emanates from or through the intervention of police authorities is a criminal problem. Hence, you have to find a lawyer practicing in or specializing in the criminal side.

If you have a dispute that arose on your personal rights like right to speech, right to residence, right to work, right to own, possess and enjoy movable or immovable properties etc are civil disputes. Then you have to find and engage the services of a civil lawyer.

Once you have found out and identified a lawyer, then it is your duty to enquire and check up the credentials of the particular lawyer, before entrusting him any of your brief. Such enquiry and verification is necessary because when you entrust your brief to a lawyer, if it is a criminal case, you run the risk of getting penalized or punished or even undergo imprisonment for a specific period or sometimes even your life is at stake, if your lawyer do not conduct your case efficiently. Suppose, if your civil dispute is not dealt with properly by your lawyer, you run the risk of losing your civil rights including your movable and immovable properties, become heavily indebted, suffering financial losses; you may even go bankrupt all of a sudden. Therefore, when you have a civil dispute, you are at equally at stake. Therefore, before entrusting your brief to a lawyer, you have to necessarily embark upon some preliminary steps.   

The credentials of a lawyer include what is his or her standing in the bar, in what side his or her practice has been, in which side he or she is more capable, whether it is on the civil or criminal side etc. If need be, if the concerned lawyer has a personal web site -in advanced western countries like UK or US and in the   Indian metropolis like Mumbai, Chennai or Delhi, reputed lawyers run their own web sites- furnishing adequate information about them, the area of practice in which they specialize, about their expertise etc; Hence, you can verify and crosscheck the information that you have gathered about them through these web sites.

However, before deciding to engage his services, fix up an appointment with the lawyer; then go to his office, discuss your problems with him; just observe, how far he understands your problems, what practical solutions that he offer to your problems and how much he is able to convince you etc; however, before taking a final decision of entrusting your brief to him, you should get convinced that you can afford to pay the legal fee demanded by him. If you feel that the fees demanded by him is very high, it is always better to choose a lawyer that you can afford to. You should never engage a lawyer with a halfhearted approach; nor it is advisable to retrace your promise of agreeing to the payment of a particular fee.It will further complicate your legal problems. Hence, it is always advisable to find and engage a lawyer that you can afford to.

Therefore, you should be careful enough to work with a horse sense in finding, evaluating and engaging the services of a lawyer, before entrusting any brief to him. Otherwise, you will be at your own peril.