March 13th, 2008 by Josh King, VP of Business Development and General Counsel

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Paul wrote recently about public records and Avvo’s mixed experience in obtaining information from the keepers of this data in each state. Where some states make attorney licensing data freely available (e.g., California, Texas and Washington), others are head-scratchingly opaque about what should be straightforward, publicly-accessible information. We’ve run up against this in spades with New Jersey, to the point where we’ve had to petition the New Jersey Supreme Court to get relief. I thought it would be interesting to let readers follow the sausage-making process we’re going through to obtain this public information.

New Jersey is the 11th most populous state, but it boasts the 8th largest number of licensed attorneys. Naturally, we would love to expand Avvo’s coverage to include New Jersey; we cover New York and we regularly get inquiries from New Jersey lawyers asking when we are going to cover the Garden State. However, despite a year-long effort to obtain attorney information from New Jersey, we have gotten . . . just about nowhere.

As this will be the first post in my chronicling of New Jersey, let’s start with a little background. Want to find information about a lawyer in WA or CA? Go to the state bar website and enter the name. Easy. How about NJ? You’ve got to call the Clerk of the New Jersey Supreme Court (like many eastern states, NJ does not have a mandatory state bar handling attorney admissions and discipline). Not only is there no website for attorney info, but it took us quite a bit of poking around before we even found the right people to talk to. Not exactly helpful for a consumer trying to find out, say, if the divorce lawyer she is considering hiring is in good standing with the bar.

After getting the run-around last spring, we put NJ to the side and launched service with the 9 states (and DC) that Avvo currently covers. Last fall, I reinitiated our efforts to get the New Jersey data. After several calls, I was told I needed to deal with the Supreme Court Clerk, Stephen Townsend. Oh and I had to do it by letter. But hey, at least they let me send it by fax! That’s progress, right?

Next – The Letter Writing Commences, or How I Reverted to My Pre-Internet Days as a First-Year Litigator.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 13th, 2008 at 11:43 am by Josh King, VP of Business Development and General Counsel and is filed under Josh King Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.