I was wondering if anyone knew how to find the creditionals on lawyers... how many cases they have won and possibly what they represent. I'm looking for a lawyer in Washington state that deals with custody issues.

You might want to also give the following site a try. A lot of the lawyers are rated by their peers on it.

Martindale.com: Use our lawyer locator or browse our attorney directory (http://www.martindale.com/)

Also to the defense of attorneys, pure win / lose tells you very ittle, since you don't know what type of case they had, if they had a man who abused his kids, beat his wife, he will most likely lose the case.
This does not mean he is a bad attorney but had a no win case.

Also in every divorce and child custody case, one attorney wins, and the other loses, often just to the facts of the case. So in the end, while the right attorney is very important, even "Perrry Mason" will not win if you just don't have a solid case.

I hadn't thought of the above points. Fr_Chuck's experience with the law and legal matters is showing!

Yes and the fact I could not pass the bar exam after law school.

But I have a friend who is an attorney, and he takes a lot of really hardship cases, he has a fairly poor win because a lot of his cases have little chance of winning before he walks in the door. Or take a Public Defender, who basically pleads out well over 1/2 of the cases, so he loses 1/2 before he even walks into a court room.

Or lets say a child custody case in a state where women normally always get the children, the attorney who represents the husband has about a 5 percent chance of winning custody.

Or again those attorneys who take on personal injury cases, most are settled out of atual court, and they will not even take a case that does not have a great chance of winning and winning a lot of money. So if you walk into their offices with a bad case they will not take it normally.
So they have a much higher win average.

With that said of course there are better attorneys than others, there was one DUI attorney in Atlanta, I never knew of him losing a DUI case.

One of the best things, is to check out your attorney with the state bar, and go talk to a few in person, and find one that seems right for you.

Hello in:

Just to add to the Padres in depth answer, I think you need to choose a lawyer, especially in family law, based upon your personal rapport with the lawyer. Time and time again, we've seen people here who, aftere they've hired great lawyers, can't get in touch with them, and that they don't return phone calls.

That said, call Bob Mussehl in Seattle - 206.357.4216. He handled my divorce and child support stuff. He's a wonderful caring individual and a top notch lawyer.

excon

PS> No, some OTHER lawyer lost my criminal cases...

Thank you for all the responses. Especially excon for the info and phone number I will look into him and see how much he charges. THANKS AGAIN YOU GUYS!!

Whatever you do - who ever you hire - you have to research the law yourself too. Don't count on any lawyer to do it all for you - you'd never be able to afford it.

Research on the web - get books from the library. Read your civil custody codes or laws on your state website. The more you know the better the results and the lower your legal fees will be. Good luck.