Subject: Re: sort of OT - lawyers
As a follow-up, how does one determine that? Google reviews? That was facetious, but it might be interesting if that was correct. Is there a resource for determining the quality of a lawyer, and whether they are appropriate to my situation (should I find myself picked up for something)? I use the judge ratings of their peers to determine which judges I vote for, for example.

You know, I don't really know. Since I'm in the legal field, I would just ask colleagues to recommend someone - so I've never had to think about it much. My understanding is that it generally works the way you'd find a good doctor. You'd reach out to someone in your monkeysphere that was a doctor and ask them for a referral, either to the person you're looking for or someone who might know someone like that. I do know that there are lawyer referral services out there, but I don't know how active they are in "ranking" the lawyers they feed work to.