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The Best & The Rest: Attorney Ratings and Recommendations

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The legal education community seems downright obsessed with rankings at times. Even slight movements in the annual U.S. News and World Report graduate school rankings can have large ripple effects at law schools. University of Chicago Law professor and prominent legal blogger Brian Leiter even has a dedicated "Law School Rankings" blog, measuring law school faculty scholarly impact and productivity, law student admissions by LSAT scores and GPA, and employment placement figures.

So it's no surprise that the rankings bug has infected the legal profession, as well as academia. Here at Goodson Blogson HQ, we surrender. Our recently-updated research guide to Directories of Lawyers now includes the inevitable: a section of attorney rating and recommendation sites, such as Avvo and Super Lawyers. The inclusion arrives just in time for a brand-new Super Lawyers edition dedicated to business lawyers, released earlier this week.

The Directories of Lawyers guide also includes print and online resources for locating attorneys in particular states, specialties, and foreign countries. One particularly useful resource for locating lawyers is the American Bar Association's FindLegalHelp.org portal, which provides links for each jurisdiction with information about referral services, free or low-cost legal aid, the court system, foreclosure information, and guidance for self-represented litigants.

For more resources to locate information about an attorney, check out the updated Directories of Lawyers guide or Ask a Librarian.
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