Selecting a Good Lawyer

Most elder law attorneys do not specialize in every one of these areas. So when an attorney says he or she practices Elder Law, find out which of these matters he or she handles. You will want to hire the attorney who regularly handles matters in the area of concern in your particular case and who will know enough about the other fields to question whether the action being taken might be affected by laws in any of the other areas of law on the list. For example, if you are going to rewrite your will and your spouse is ill, the estate planner needs to know enough about Medicaid to know whether it is an issue with regard to your spouse's inheritance.

Unfortunately, there are some attorneys who hold themselves out as "elder law attorneys" but who have little or no experience in this area of practice. They recognize that the aging of America represents a business opportunity for them and they hope to "cash in." (This is not limited to lawyers, by the way. Financial planners, insurance agents, accountants, and bankers, to name just a few other occupations, have been known to do the same thing.) For that reason, you will want to be particularly careful in narrowing down your selection of an elder law attorney.

If you don't already have a list of prospective lawyers, a great place to start your search is right here at lawyers.com. You can do a free search to come up with a list of lawyers by using the Find A Lawyer search box that can be accessed from anywhere on lawyers.com. (You should see a search box on the right side of your computer screen.)

Once you have a list of lawyers, use the following guidelines to do some initial screening and narrow your list down to three or four prospective candidates:

* Look at biographical information, including whatever you can find on Web sites for the lawyers and their law firms. Do they appear to have expertise in the area of elder law that you need? Do they have any information on their Web sites that is helpful to you?
* Use search engines to surf the Web. Do searches under the name of the lawyer and his or her law firm. Can you find any articles, FAQ's or other informational pieces that the lawyer has done that that give you a level of comfort?
* Ask other people if they have heard of the attorneys and what they think about them.
* Contact your state bar association or visit the bar association's Web site to find out if the lawyer is in good standing.

(source: elder-law.lawyers.com)