LINKS
 
Find a Lawyer
 
There are several websites that provide information on lawyers throughout the United States.  Please note that these websites do not evaluate their referral lawyers.
 
Amongst the largest of these sites are Lawyers.com, FindLaw, FindaLawyer and LegalMatch.  One site, Martindale-Hubble, evaluates its lawyers according to their reputation in their areas of practice and the size of their firms.  The Martindale-Hubble index is the primary source that most lawyers use to get information about other lawyers they don’t already know.
 
Evaluate a Lawyer
 
Your best resource for evaluating a lawyer is word-of-mouth.  If you can’t find someone who has used a lawyer with whom he or she was happy, you can go to your state’s lawyer oversight agency.  These agencies keep records of complaints about lawyers and of disciplinary actions taken against them.  All of these records are open to the public.
 
In Massachusetts, the resource is the Board of Bar Overseers.  In North Carolina, the resource is the North Carolina State Bar.  If you do an internet search of the words “lawyer”, “state bar” and the name of your state, you will be able to find the website.
 
Find a Mediator
 
Mediators provide direct conflict-resolution services.  Mediation puts control of the situation in the hands of the parties, avoids court and lowers costs.  Mediation is now being required in many states for family, employment and many other litigation cases.
 
The best-known and most established resource for finding a mediator or an arbitrator is the American Arbitration Association.  Like all the other mediator resources, the AAA is a membership organization and it does not list mediators or arbitrators who do not belong to it.
 
The largest national society of mediators only is The Association for Conflict Resolution.  Not all mediators belong to ACR, however, and their search engine only includes ACR members.   Other similar organizations include The Professional Mediation Association and The National Association for Community Mediation.
 
Learn More about Andrew Weiss
 
Andrew Weiss is the author of Beginning Mindfulness: Learning the Way of Awareness.  You can find out more about the book at its official website.
 
You can order copies of Beginning Mindfulness online through the publisher, New World Library, and from Barnes and Noble and Borders.  Amazon has an electronic version available for download to their Kindle reader.